The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has for the first time publicly acknowledged that he apologised in 2000 to a reporter who alleged he groped her, but said he was very confident he did not act inappropriately.

The accusation first appeared in a local newspaper a few days after a music festival in British Columbia that Trudeau, then a 28-year-old teacher, was attending.

The unsigned editorial in the Creston Valley Advance accused Trudeau of “groping” and “inappropriately handling” an unnamed reporter who was covering the event.

While the editorial offered no specifics on what had happened, it claimed the reporter felt “blatantly disrespected” and Trudeau had apologised for his behaviour. “I’m sorry,” the editorial alleged Trudeau to have said. “If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.”

[link to www.theguardian.com (secure)]