There is now a face to the alleged Herman Cain scandal.
Sharon Bialek, a former employee of the National Restaurant Association’s Education Foundation and a registered Republican, told reporters Monday that Cain treated her inappropriately in 1997 when she was no longer in the organization but was approaching Cain for advice.
At a press conference hosted by celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, Bialek described an incident after dinner in 1997 in Washington DC when she said Cain reached up her skirt and tried to force her head to his crotch while the pair were in Cain’s car.
In a statement released after the press conference, the Cain campaign dismissed
Bialek.
“All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are completely false,” the statement reads. “Mr. Cain has never harassed anyone.”
But what Bialek is accusing Cain of goes much farther than sexual harassment and borders on a sexual assault. At the press conference, Allred declined to call the assault more than harassment, however.
“I’m not going to currently describe it beyond the way it has been described,” Allred said.
Bialek said she told a few other people after the incident what happened — and Allred says she has sworn statements to back her up.
Bialek said she was in DC back in 1997 to ask Cain for assistance finding a job at the NRA and Cain suggested the sex would help make that happen.
“He said, “you want a job, right?’” Bialek said.
Bialek is not exactly the liberal ideologue some conservatives had predicted was behind the allegations of inappropriate behavior by Cain.
She said she last met Cain just a few months ago at a tea party rally in the Chicago area.
Here’s video of Bialek describing the incident with Cain:
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.