Woman accuses Herman Cain of unwanted sexual advances while she was seeking help getting a new job

A former employee of the National Restaurant Association’s educational foundation accused presidential contender Herman Cain on Monday of making an aggressive sexual advance 14 years ago, for the first time putting a name and face with claims of harassment that have plagued Cain for more than a week.

The accusations from Sharon Bialek, a single mother from Chicago, threw Cain’s campaign into another day of turmoil when she described how he allegedly sexually harassed and groped her while the two sat in a car together in Washington. At the time of the alleged incident, Bialek said, she had recently lost her job at the restaurant association, where Cain was chief executive, and was seeking his help finding work.

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Sharon Bialek, a client of attorney Gloria Allred, becomes the first woman to publicly accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment at a news conference in New York City.

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The Allegations

When she told him to stop touching her, she said, Cain replied: “You want a job, right?”

“I was very surprised and shocked,” Bialek said, choking up as she spoke to reporters at a news conference in Manhattan. “I said, ‘What are you doing? You know, I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.’  ”

Cain’s campaign quickly issued a statement denying “all allegations of harassment” and accused Bialek’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, of “bringing forth more false accusations” against the Republican candidate. The campaign said Cain would hold a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Phoenix to address the allegations.

Cain went on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Monday night and vowed to fight the claims head on. “There is not an ouce of truth to all these allegations,” he said.

The statement from his campaign said Bialek had been “convinced” to come forward by Cain’s opponents, and described Bialek as “a woman with a long history of severe financial difficulties, including personal bankruptcy.”

Bialek said in television interviews on Tuesday that she was acting entirely on her own, and was not being paid for speaking out.

The stark details of her account added a new dimension to a scandal that has dominated the news since Politico first broke the story on Oct. 30. Her allegations moved the controversy beyond the realm of misunderstandings or jokes that several Cain operatives have suggested are at the root of other harassment claims. Bialek said Cain forcefully touched her, putting his hand up her skirt, reaching for her genitals and pushing her head down toward his crotch.

Allred said that Bialek had come forward not for personal gain but to give a “voice” to the other women who alleged harassment, and that Bialek had chosen not to sell her story or file a lawsuit. Bialek had told two people — a former boyfriend and a businessman in Chicago — her story at the time of the alleged incident, Allred said. She held up two pages that she said were sworn affidavits from the two men supporting Bialek’s account.

Bialek was born and raised in Chicago and has lived there most of her life, according to Allred. She is a Republican, a stay-at-home mother of a 13-year-old son, and a college graduate who has worked as host of a cooking show, an account manager at Revlon and a director of corporate development at the Easter Seal Society, Allred said.