Ronan Farrow: Women had "everything to lose" by coming forward about Eric Schneiderman
NEW YORK -- Just days after accepting an award for supporting women's rights, 63-year-old Eric Schneiderman resigned as New York's attorney general after the New Yorker posted an article Monday night detailing allegations from four women who say they were physically abused by him.
Michelle Manning Barish told the New Yorker she dated Schneiderman from 2013 to 2015. During that time, Manning Barish remembered that when the two had sex, "he often slapped her across the face without her consent." She also described one incident where she says after a night of drinking, Schneiderman "used his body weight to hold me down, and he began to choke me."
Author Tanya Selvaratnam dated Schneiderman in 2016. Born in Sri Lanka, she says Schneiderman called her his "brown slave" and would sometimes tell her to call him master.
"These are women who had nothing to gain by coming forward and everything to lose," said Ronan Farrow, who co-authored the article with Jane Mayer. "Many of them hesitated for quite some time. Their friends and loved ones told them don't do this, either because they feared that there would be that retaliation or because they just felt his work for the Democratic party was too good and too important to jeopardize."
Schneiderman has denied the abuse allegations, saying in a statement: "In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity."
Recently, he rose to national prominence by launching an investigation into Harvey Weinstein.
"If any of these allegations against Eric Schneiderman are true, the hypocrisy is beyond belief," said CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office has opened a criminal investigation into these allegations against Schneiderman. That's the same office Schneiderman tasked with looking into Harvey Weinstein. The New York Police Department also says it wants to talk to the women accusing Schneiderman.