CHICAGO, USA (AFP) — President Barack Obama condemned the Republican vying to replace him in the White House, Donald Trump, for his “demeaning” lewd boasts about groping women that have thrown his campaign into crisis.

“Are we really going to risk giving Donald Trump the power to roll back all the progress we’ve made?” Obama asked during a campaign event for Democrats in his adopted home state of Illinois.

“I don’t need to repeat it. There are children in the room… Demeaning, degrading women, but also minorities, immigrants, people of other faiths, mocking the disabled… He puffs himself up by putting other people down.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s lewd remarks about women have unleashed an avalanche on social media in which women recall being sexually assaulted by men for the first time.

Canadian Kelly Oxford said she didn’t expect the huge response when she set the chain in motion over weekend with the call: “Women, tweet me your first assaults. They aren’t just stats.”

Oxford then went first: “Old man on city bus grabs my ‘p***y’ and smiles at me, I’m 12.”

A 39-year-old writer, Oxford launched the Twitter appeal within hours of the release Friday of a 2005 Trump video by the Washington Post.

She used the same word that Republican presidential candidate Trump employed as he boasts about grabbing women’s genitals.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump is heard bragging to celebrity show host Billy Bush.

“Grab them by the p***y,” Trump adds. “You can do anything.”

Oxford said she has received nearly 50 responses to her Twitter call over the weekend. Many of the messages bear the hashtag #notokay, testifying in several languages to a “culture of rape”.

They describe abuse as children or adolescents by teachers, a best friend, or by anonymous attackers on streets or public transport.

“In the garage at a friend’s party (18) and in the back of a guy’s car (17),” says one.

“First kiss with guy, sticks his finger in without asking. I was 14, He was 18,” another recalls.

“Nine years old, doc office, first gyno exam. An adult before I understood he had assaulted me first time. Never see male docs now.”

“I am four, maybe five. He’s my preschool teacher.”