Clinton was then -- in 1978 -- the powerful Attorney General of Arkansas. She was also embarrassed because she was married at that time and having an affair with another man. But Juanita Broaddrick -- referred to as Jane Doe # 5 in the Paula Jones case -- has finally gone public with a vengeance.

In the process she has further pushed the envelope as far as ethics and standards of journalism goes. Does the media takes cognizance of a story for which there is no first-hand evidence many years after it happened, especially when the `victim' herself denied the incident for many years, just because she changes her mind? As usual media mavens are awash with debate, diatribe, and indecision, but the story has slowly forced itself into the mainstream despite the best efforts of many to ignore it and wish it would go away.

Thestory so far: For years, rumours that a woman in Arkansas had told her friends that Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her swirled around the political arena. The woman, Juanita Broaddrick, was approached by friends, reporters, and conservative politicians and urged to go public -- especially when Clinton ran for office -- but she always refused. In fact, at the height of the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky affairs, she even gave a sworn affidavit saying the rumoured incident never happened, forcing Starr to make only a passing reference to her in his famous report.

Early this year, she finally agreed to come out in the open in an interview to NBC reporter Lisa Meyer. Why? In part because she was sickened by rumours that her husband -- the man she was having an affair with when Clinton allegedly assaulted her -- had been bought off by the President's camp. But after taping the interview in January, NBC sat on it, saying it needed to verify several facts relating to the sensational allegation. In themeantime, word leaked out that the network had landed the interview but was canning it under pressure from the White House.

Last week, the conservative Wall Street Journal outed the story when one of its reporters spoke to Broaddrick -- who was angry that NBC had not telecast the interview. The Washington Post followed a day later and the New York Times, the most restrained among the major dailies in these matters, wrote about it only on Wednesday. On Thursday night, NBC finally aired a 26-minute segment of what was said to be a day-long interview. According to Broaddrick, she was a Clinton supporter when the two met in Little Rock, Arkansas during a campaign in April 1978. She wanted to discuss the campaign with him and he suggested they go to her hotel room. She agreed, sensing no danger because she liked and admired him as a rising politician. But once in the room, he got fresh.

``He starts biting on my lip.... I tried to pull away from him. Then he forced me down on the bed,''Broaddrick said. ``I felt the whole thing -- you can imagine -- of being violated. I felt, of course, there was pain.''

Broaddrick said she protested and resisted until her lip was bitten, her skirt and pantyhose torn, and she had been forced to submit to an attacker she thought ``a charismatic man that had bright ideas for our state.'' Asked if she thought the encounter amounted to rape, she said ``Yes, no doubt whatsoever.''

``I didn't want this to happen. He didn't listen to me. I told him, `Please don't'... He was just a vicious, awful person,'' Broaddrick who is now 56 and a registered nurse said, breaking down several times during the interview. She said her hatred for Clinton was ``overwhelming.''

The latest allegations once again put the media in a bind as to what to do with a story that presumably has no physical evidence and is seen as having little relevance especially after the President has been acquitted in the impeachment trial. Still, one veteran reporter asked, rather hesitantly, aboutthe allegations at a news conference on Thursday. ``My attorney has already replied to that and I have nothing to add to it,'' Clinton replied coldly. The attorney, David Kendall, last week, dismissed the charges as ``absolutely false.''

NBC and other media have also interviewed other friends of Broaddrick who say they saw her with a swollen upper lip soon after the assault and she told them about it. But Broaddrick herself did not remember the date or even the month it happened. She later accepted a job offer from the Clinton dispensation although she says when he tried to be friendly and apologise for his behaviour during one chance encounter later, she snubbed him.