Conley
11-02-2011, 10:56 AM
WASHINGTON — The National Restaurant Association gave $35,000 — a year’s salary — in severance pay to a female staff member in the late 1990s after an encounter with Herman Cain, its chief executive at the time, made her uncomfortable working there, three people with direct knowledge of the payment said on Tuesday.
The woman was one of two whose accusations of sexual harassment by Mr. Cain, now a Republican candidate for president, led to paid severance agreements during his 1996-99 tenure as the association’s chief. Disclosure of the cases has rocked Mr. Cain’s campaign just as he was surging in polls.
Further challenging Mr. Cain, a lawyer for the second woman called on the restaurant association to release her from a confidentiality agreement signed as part of her settlement, raising the prospect that she could publicly dispute Mr. Cain’s account of what happened. The lawyer said the confidentiality agreement had left her unable to respond to Mr. Cain’s dismissal of the complaints against him as a “witch hunt” or to his denials of any inappropriate behavior toward the women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/us/politics/herman-cain-accuser-got-a-years-salary-in-severance-pay.html?_r=1&hp
That's more money than I originally thought. The problem as I see it is not the he said/she said situation, it's that Cain initially lied about not ever being accused or settling. That will prove much more damning over the long haul.
The woman was one of two whose accusations of sexual harassment by Mr. Cain, now a Republican candidate for president, led to paid severance agreements during his 1996-99 tenure as the association’s chief. Disclosure of the cases has rocked Mr. Cain’s campaign just as he was surging in polls.
Further challenging Mr. Cain, a lawyer for the second woman called on the restaurant association to release her from a confidentiality agreement signed as part of her settlement, raising the prospect that she could publicly dispute Mr. Cain’s account of what happened. The lawyer said the confidentiality agreement had left her unable to respond to Mr. Cain’s dismissal of the complaints against him as a “witch hunt” or to his denials of any inappropriate behavior toward the women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/us/politics/herman-cain-accuser-got-a-years-salary-in-severance-pay.html?_r=1&hp
That's more money than I originally thought. The problem as I see it is not the he said/she said situation, it's that Cain initially lied about not ever being accused or settling. That will prove much more damning over the long haul.