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Stephanie Carter, the wife of a former Cabinet official, said that a four-year-old viral photo of Joe Biden touching her shoulders has been misinterpreted by the media.

The photo, one of several to circulate in the days since former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores accused Biden of smelling her hair and kissing her head at a campaign event, shows Biden with his hands on Carter’s shoulders as she watched her husband, former Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, during his 2015 swearing-in ceremony. In the photo, Biden has leaned in close—veryclose—to whisper into Carter’s right ear.

Stephanie Carter is the woman in this pic with Joe Biden.
Despite how it looks, she says it’s not a #MeToo moment: “The Joe Biden in my picture is a close friend helping someone get through a big day, for which I will always be grateful.” https://t.co/fEYYAJKXwI pic.twitter.com/OxvECJEfzE

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) April 1, 2019

“Let me state upfront that I don’t know [Lucy Flores], but I absolutely support her right to speak her truth and she should be, like all women, believed,” Carter wrote in her essay, “The #MeToo Story That Wasn’t Me.” “But her story is not mine. The Joe Biden inmy pictureis a close friend helping someone get through a big day, for which I will always be grateful.”

According to Carter, she had slipped on some ice and fallen earlier in the day while visiting Arlington National Cemetery. When she and her husband went to the White House for the swearing-in ceremony, she was feeling “self-conscious and tentative (not a normal state for those who know me) about the fall — and perhaps about how much our life might change,” she wrote. Biden, she said, could sense she was nervous. He hugged her and placed his hands on her shoulders. In the moment captured in the photo, she said, he leaned in and whispered, “Thank you for letting him do this.”

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The whole encounter was simply a show of support from an old friend, she wrote. “But a still shot taken from a video — misleadingly extracted from what was a longer moment between close friends — sent out in a snarky tweet — came to be the lasting image of that day.”

The photo from that day, which went viral back in 2015, was passed around over the weekend after Flores published an essay for the Cut with her story of an encounter with Biden at a campaign event in 2014, when she was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor of Nevada. The encounter left her feeling powerless, ashamed, and confused, she wrote. Media coverage of the allegation dug up other allegedly “creepy” behavior from Biden, as when he kissed Sen. Chuck Grassley’s wife on the lips, placed his hand too high on a woman’s waist, and on other occasions touched female acquaintances with too much familiarity.

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In response to Flores’ accusation, Biden released a statement asserting that he did not believe he acted “inappropriately” but indicating he would listen to any women who experienced an interaction with him in a different way than he did. “In my many years on the campaign trial and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort,” he said. “And not once—never—did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested that I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.”

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He added: “I may not recall these moments the same way, and I may be surprised at what I hear. But we have arrived at an important time when women feel they can and should relate their experiences, and men should pay attention. And I will.”

In response to Biden’s statement, Flores told the Daily Beast that she believed Biden was telling the truth when he said he didn’t remember the incident. “He probably doesn’t remember the interaction,” she said. “I would argue that he is so used to behaving in that way that it is no big deal.”

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