A former Albany State House reporter is now the seventh woman to publicly accuse Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment – detailing on Friday cases of unwanted touches and humiliating comments she suffered while covering her government.
Jessica Bakeman says she has been sexually harassed by Cuomo several times since the beginning of her career as a journalist in 2012.
In a first-person article for New York Magazine, she described a 2014 Christmas party at which the governor grabbed her tightly as she said goodbye that night.
“He took my hand, as if to shake it, but he refused to let go,” wrote Bakeman. “He put his other arm around my back, his hand on my waist and held me firmly in place while indicating to a photographer that he wanted us to pose for a photo.”
Bakeman, who was 25 at the time and worked for what is now Politico New York, said that the red flags had increased, given that his “job was to analyze and scrutinize him”.
“I didn’t want a picture of him with his hands on my body and a smile on his face,” she wrote. “But I did the reflexive assessment that most women and marginalized people know instinctively, the calculation about risk and power and self-preservation. I knew it would be much easier to smile at the brief moment it takes to take a photo than to challenge one of the most powerful men in the country. “
Months in his professional career, Bakeman claimed that Cuomo slid his arm around her shoulders while telling stories to his male colleagues at a party at the Executive Mansion for a communications aide.
“He left it there and kept me trapped beside him for several minutes while he finished telling his story,” she recalled the alleged incident in 2012, when she worked for USA Today. “I stood there, my cheeks warm, laughing nervously as my male colleagues did the same. We all knew it was wrong, but we did nothing. “
In the years that followed, Cuomo “never let me forget that I was a woman,” continued Bakeman, saying that he once mocked her for having a purple phone – instead of answering her question during a stammer in the press – and humiliated her again in 2014, when she shouted at her colleague, Ken Lovett, a former Post Albany reporter who then worked for the Daily News, at a news conference.
“‘I just like how you shut up Ken Lovett, to tell you the truth,'” Cuomo told her at the time, wrote Bakeman.
She added: “Cuomo seemed to find it hilarious that I had the audacity to talk about a man. With him, these exchanges were always intended to be a public humiliation. “
Bakeman said he knew that Cuomo never wanted to have sex with her.
Instead, “it was about power,” she wrote. “He wanted me to know that he could take my dignity away at any time with an inappropriate comment or a hand on my waist.”
The reporter, who now works in Florida, said there was a marked difference between the way Cuomo treats his male colleagues.
“The way he intimidates and demeans women is different,” she said. “He uses sexual touches and innuendo to stoke fear in us. That is the definition of the sexual harassment textbook. “
The three-term Democrat is facing growing calls from his own Democratic colleagues to step down because of a series of allegations of sexual misconduct.
The matter will be investigated by New York Attorney General Letitia James, while the state assembly on Thursday approved an investigation into potential impeachment.
Cuomo has vehemently denied the accusations – and has so far refused to step down for what he considers “canceling the culture”.