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The first woman to publicly accuse Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment has confirmed her plans to sue him — insisting that the powerful politician is still “gaslighting and revictimizing” women.
“Finally, the world now believes what I have known for years but had been too afraid to reveal: the Governor of New York sexually harassed and abused far too many women, for far too long,” former aide Lindsey Boylan wrote in a blog post Monday.
“It’s not ‘our truth.’ It’s the truth,” she said of the 10 other women who came forward after her December tweets about Cuomo’s alleged behavior.
In her Monday Medium post, Boylan said that “digesting each line” of the scathing 165-page report issued by Attorney General Letitia James’ office last week was “like swallowing a shard of glass.”
Boylan was Cuomo’s deputy secretary for economic development and a special advisor from March 2015 through October 2018, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“I am personally devastated by the accounts of the Governor’s widespread harassment, the scope of the retaliation campaign he waged against me and the efforts by his minions to protect him at all costs,” the ex-aide wrote.
“And he continues to abuse us. As recently as Saturday, the Governor sent his attack dogs on national television to accuse me of ‘lying,’” she added of the governor’s legal team.
“He is gaslighting and revictimizing us. He is showing everyone what happens to women when they speak up about harassment and abuse in the workplace,” Boylan, whose bravery at coming forward was highlighted as the inspiration for many of the others to also speak up, wrote.
Yet “the Governor’s office continues to use official government channels (funded by taxpayers) to release statements and stage press conferences to spread lies about me and attempt to taint me and other survivors,” she charged.
Now, Boylan said she intends to sue the Governor and others who were involved in the alleged efforts to smear her.
“Too many people have been harmed or had their careers destroyed after reporting harassment. Retaliation is unacceptable in any workplace. It revictimizes those who have suffered abuse and it deters people from coming forward,” she said.
Boylan compared the Governor’s Executive Chamber to “the Olympics” because “there is no place higher to go,” and said the investigation also shined “a light on a system that protects the predator.”
Boylan said she feels “a deep solidarity” with other alleged victims who have confided in her, writing, “Each of us has a responsibility to keep fighting for them.”
Gov. Cuomo has denied the allegations in the explosive report, maintaining after its release that he “never touched anyone inappropriately.”
Still, there has been intense pressure for him to resign — including from President Biden.
But Cuomo clung to his position Tuesday, exactly a week after the damning investigation was released.
The Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN that he spoke to numerous people in Cuomo’s circle over the weekend — with most amazed that he remained in a “fighting mood.”
“People around him are looking for what’s the next chapter in their life, I’ll put it that way,” Sharpton told CNN, saying that people were asking, “Where do I get a job?”
“I said to them — I don’t see how he survives,” Sharpton added about his conversations with Cuomo advisers over the weekend.
Despite these calls from his own staffers to quit, “the governor is very much focused on getting the evidence from the Assembly and being able to make a submission” to its impeachment process, one of Cuomo’s personal attorneys, Rita Glavin, told CNN on Monday.
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