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Cuomo claims making someone uncomfortable is not the same as harassment

May 14, 2021 6:33 am

Edward McKinley reports in the Times Union that Gov. Andrew Cuomo defended himself May 13 against allegations that he made inappropriate sexual advances toward eight women, by saying that, "Harassment is not making someone feel uncomfortable. That is not harassment. If I just made you feel uncomfortable, that is not harassment. That is you feeling uncomfortable." The newspaper quotes several experts who disputed Cuomo's comment. “Certainly the statement the governor made, if that’s the law, I mean there’s no sexual harassment. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," said John Bailey, an Albany employment attorney. Debra Katz, the lawyer for Charlotte Bennett, one of the women who accuse the governor of sexual harassment said, that "For someone who signed the law defining sexual harassment in New York state, and who claims to have taken the state’s mandated sexual harassment training every year despite Ms. Bennett seeing someone else take it on his behalf, Gov. Cuomo continues to show an alarming degree of ignorance about what constitutes sexual harassment." Cuomo also said this during a new conference in the Bronx May 13: “I never said anything I believed was inappropriate. You could leave this press conference and say, ‘Oh, the governor harassed me. You can say that.’ I would say, I never said anything that I believed was inappropriate. I never meant to make you feel that way. You may hear it that way, you may interpret it that way, and I respect that and I apologize to you if I said something you think was offensive.” Read more about this story in the Times Union.

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