Do I know, for certain, that Sharon Bialek is lying about Herman Cain sexually harassing her in 1997? No, but a couple of things about her story don’t quite pass the smell test. So far four women have accused Cain, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, of sexually harassing them in the 1990s.
Bialek was the first to go public. Karen Kraushaar, a second accuser, has also gone public but hasn’t given any details about the alleged harassment.
Kraushaar’s position is the opposite of Bialek’s. Described in news reports as a 50-year-old single mother, Bialek hasn’t been bashful about giving details.
She’s been in newspapers and on several television news shows, telling reporters and the public that Cain put his hand under her dress and pulled her head toward his crotch when the two were in a car together.
But what I find mind-boggling is the reason Bialek gave for revealing, 14 years after the fact, the details of the alleged “sexual harassment.”
“I actually did it because I wanted to help him,” Bialek said in according to a CBSnews.com story. “I wanted to give him a platform to come clean, to tell the truth.”
On one early morning news show, Bialek presumed to chide Cain: “Admit that you acted inappropriately,” she scolded.
Bialek’s claim that Cain “acted inappropriately” is precisely what makes me skeptical about her story.
If true, what Cain did to Bialek isn’t “sexual harassment” or “acting inappropriately.” What Cain did is called a sexual offense, either second, third or fourth degree sexual assault. It’s a crime, possibly a felony, for heaven’s sake.
Here, in essence, is what Bialek is saying: “Hey, Herman, why don’t you cop to committing this felony?”
Now who’s going to cop to a felony if there is only one witness who hasn’t produced one iota of evidence to corroborate her story?
I’ll get the full disclosure out of the way first. I’m not a supporter of Cain’s bid for the presidency. I dismissed him way back in the summer, when he made his first major gaffe.
At a Georgia rally, Cain urged Americans to either read or re-read the U.S. Constitution. Then he quoted passages he obviously thought were in the Constitution.
It must have been quite the revelation for him when his advisers told him the passages were from the Declaration of Independence.
One of my several criteria for a presidential candidate is that he or she knows the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But given how Cain has risen in the polls, I clearly must be funny that way.
Then there was Cain’s announcement that he wouldn’t appoint a Muslim to his Cabinet, and that Muslims were trying to “push” Shariah law on America.
His being in bed with America’s “Islam is evil” crowd didn’t win him any points with me either.
And, most recently, there was his announcement that America had to prevent China from becoming a nuclear power. Cain was clearly in an alternative universe in 1964, when China exploded its first nuclear bomb.
So Cain is definitely off my list of Republican presidential candidates I’d consider voting for, but that doesn’t affect my nose any.
And my nose tells me that, when it comes to one Sharon Bialek’s allegations about Cain’s “inappropriate conduct,” there’s a rat somewhere.
Why didn’t Bialek report what was clearly a sexual assault when it happened, back in 1997? I’m betting her answer will be something like Cain wasn’t running for president then, and a man of that character shouldn’t be president.
Does that mean if a janitor commits a sexual assault, then it’s OK?
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
