Herman Cain GOP Las Vegas - P 2011
Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesHerman Cain reached under a former employee’s skirt and pulled her head toward his crotch some 14 years ago, a woman told dozens of reporters at a press conference Monday that was carried live by some cable news outlets.
Standing by her famous attorney, Gloria Allred, at a Friars club facility in New York, Sharon Bialek said she sought Cain’s help after she lost her job at the National Restaurant Association when Cain was running the entity.
Cain, who is running for the Republican nomination for president, has been accused by several women who say he sexually harassed them on difference occasions in the 1990s while at the Restaurant Association. Bialek, though, is the first to give her name, appear in public and describe Cain’s alleged behavior.
PHOTOS: 10 Hollywood Players That Will Make a Difference in the 2012 Elections
After a heckler disrupted the press conference and was asked to leave, Allred introduced Bialek as a registered Repbulican, a former co-host of a TV cooking show and former employee of CBS Radio. She also worked for the Restaurant Association in 1996 and 1997 when she became friendly with Cain because she sat next to him at luncheons and dinner events.
After she lost her job, she arranged to meet Cain in Washington, D.C. and was surpised to see that Cain had upgraded her hotel room to a “palatial suite.” Bialek said she was seeking advice or a job recommendation from Cain, or that he’d see to it that she be rehired at the Restaurant Association.
While driving back from dinner, Cain stopped the car: “He put his hand on my leg, under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch,” Bialek told the journalists.
STORY: Hermain Cain’s Wife Cancels Interview With Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren
“Mr. Cain said, ‘You want a job, right?’ I asked him to stop, and he did.”
“Instead of recieving the help that she had hoped for, Mr. Cain instead decided to provide her with his idea of a stimuus package,” Allred quipped. (Video below).
Bialek said she told her boyfriend and aother man at the time what had happened, and Allred waved affidavits from the men as proof.
STORY: Herman Cain Blames Journalists for Sexual Harassment Drama
Bialek said she didn’t file complaints because she wasn’t working for the Restaurant Association at the time of the incident. She said she saw Cain recently at a Tea Party Rally and confronted him, hoping he’d be “man enough to own up to what he had done some 14 years ago.”
“I’m coming forward to give a face and a voice to those women who cannot,” Bialek said Monday. “I really didn’t want to be here today, and wouldn’t have been here if it had not been for the three other women who had alleged sexual harassment against Mr. Cain. I want you, Mr. Cain, to come clean. Just admit what you did.”
Bialek didn’t take questions from the journalists. Allred said no lawsuits have been filed, and she said Bialek is an an unemployed single mom today.
