Woman accuses Cain of advance

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Leaving little to the imagination, a Chicago-area woman on Monday accused Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of making a crude sexual advance more than a decade ago when she was seeking his help finding a job.

“Come clean,” Sharon Bialek challenged Cain at a news conference in New York at which she described herself as “a face and a voice” to support other accusers who so far have remained anonymous.

Cain’s campaign swiftly denied Bialek’s account.

Even so, Bialek’s nationally broadcast appearance on cable television marked a new and — for Cain — dangerous turn in a controversy that he has struggled to shed for more than a week.

Accompanied by her prominent lawyer, Gloria Allred, Bialek accused Cain of making a sexual advance one night in mid-July 1997, when she had traveled to Washington to have dinner with him in hopes he could help her find work.

She said the two had finished dinner and were in a car for what she thought was a ride to an office building.

“Instead of going into the offices he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt toward my genitals,” she said.

“He also pushed my head toward his crotch,” she added.

Bialek said she told her boyfriend, an unidentified pediatrician, as well as a longtime male friend about the episode.

None of Cain’s other accusers has provided details as graphic as Bialek’s account. But Joel Bennett, an attorney who represents one of them, said her details were “similar in nature” to what his client encountered.