New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow said the women who accused ex-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of sexual abuse flatly deny Schneiderman’s claim that he only engaged in consensual “role-playing.”
Farrow co-authored a story published Monday in which four women accused Schneiderman of abuse. It quickly led to Schneiderman’s resignation.
“A significant part of his response to this is to say that there was role-playing in his private life, and I just want to relate the message of one of these women — and it was a shared sentiment among this group — that this was not role playing,” Farrow said CNN’s “New Day” Tuesday.
“That this was not ’50 Shades of Grey.’ It wasn’t in a gray area at all. This was activity that happened in many cases fully clothed outside of a sexual context during arguments. In one case a woman wasn’t even in a relationship at all with him,” Farrow said.
In a statement Monday to Farrow and co-author Jane Mayer, Schneiderman insisted that his conduct was not assault.
“In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross,” he said.
Mayer and Farrow’s report documented four accounts of sexual misconduct against Schneiderman, who has aligned himself with feminist causes and sued Harvey Weinstein for civil rights violations after the disgraced movie mogul was accused of sexual misconduct. You can watch the Farrow interview above.