The former boyfriend of Sharon Bialek, the woman who has accused Herman Cain of groping her back in 1997, backed up some of Bialek’s story on Monday. The press conference by Shreveport, La., pediatrician Dr. Victor Zuckerman won’t sink Cain’s presidential aspirations, but it does add some credibility to Bialek’s assertions.
Zuckerman said Monday that both he and Bialek met Cain at a National Restaurant Association event in Chicago in the late 1990s. “Mr. Cain engaged both of us in conversation,” he said, echoing Bialek’s chronology. Zuckerman said he later encouraged Bialek to ask Cain for help looking for a job, as she has said.
Zuckerman also alleged that Bialek had complained to him back in 1997 that Cain responded to her request for help with an unwanted sexual advance. “When she returned, she was upset. She said that something had happened and that Mr. Cain had touched her in an inappropriate manner,” Zuckerman recalled.
The new information is not a game changer. But it makes Cain’s claim that the “Democrat machine” is behind the allegations look all the more absurd. Either conspiring opponents convinced Zuckerman–who described himself as a registered Republican–to participate in an elaborate plot by several women to falsely accuse Cain of sexual harassment, or the simplest explanation may be the correct one.