Arnold Schwarzenegger tacitly admits to groping women

Nearly 20 years after The Los Angeles Times first published a report detailing allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger had groped and humiliated women, the actor and former governor of California has tacitly admitted wrongdoing.

In a new three-part Netflix documentary series, Arnold, Schwarzenegger looks back on his response to the allegations released to the public in October 2003. The LA Times’ report included testimony from six women, four of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. Between them, the women detailed multiple incidents where Schwarzenegger allegedly touched them in a sexual manner without receiving their consent.

At the time, Schwarzenegger decried most of the article as “not true,” but apologized for having “behaved badly sometimes.” During an interview with ABC Evening News’ Peter Jennings in 2004, Schwarzenegger insisted he couldn’t “remember what was happening 20 years ago and 15 years ago.”

“My reaction in the beginning, I was kind of…defensive,” Schwarzenegger says today in the documentary. Now, his tune has changed: “I can look at it and kind of say, it doesn’t really matter what time it is. If it’s the Muscle Beach days of 40 years ago, or today, that this was wrong. It was bullshit. Forget all the excuses, it was wrong.”

LA Times reporter Carla Hall, who says the report came together in barely six weeks from the time Schwarzenegger announced his run for governor, recalls being “surprised” that the allegations “didn’t have more of an effect on the election.”

“I thought that more people would be offended themselves,” Hall says in the documentary. Despite the report, Schwarzenegger ended up replacing incumbent California governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, for the role after a recall vote. Schwarzenegger was sworn into office on November 13, 2003. How alarmingly prescient!

All three installments of Arnold are available to stream on Netflix now.