Workplace Expert: Lewinsky Was Turned Into 'The Ultimate Scapegoat'
CLARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Monica Lewinsky's tell-all article is raising new questions about her affair with former President Bill Clinton.
The piece will appear in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair. In it, Lewinsky writes that her relationship with the president was consensual.
But not everyone agrees, CBS 2's Christine Sloan reported Wednesday.
Her "inappropriate relationship" with Clinton made her a household name. Lewinsky, now 40, looks glamorous Vanity Fair. It's where she reveals the details of her affair with President Clinton, saying "sure my boss took advantage of me but ... It was a consensual relationship."
Sloan asked young women whether they think it was consensual.
"Absolutely not. There's no way," one woman said.
"When you're 24 and meeting with someone so highly standing you definitely have your judgment clouded ... Because you're young and you're naive a little bit," said Amanda Teng of West Orange, N.J.
Other disagreed.
"It had to be consensual," one person told Sloan.
Stephen Viscusi, a workplace expert and author, said power is always tipped in favor of the boss -- on the job.
"When the relationship is consensual, even with a boss, it's always wrong. It's not morally justified," Viscusi said. "I can't answer to the legal extent as to whether it's harassment, but I would tell you it's morally wrong for any boss to have a consensual relationship with an employee."
Lewinsky says she became a victim after the affair, that "any 'abuse' came in the aftermath when I was made a scapegoat to protect his powerful position."
"What Monica says, which is so true, she was made the ultimate scapegoat," Viscusi said. "Women get the blame and I find it distasteful that even some of the quotes from Hillary Clinton attribute the problem both to Monica and herself," Viscusi said.
For Hillary Clinton, the timing of Lewinsky's Vanity Fair essay, which hits newsstands in June, Couldn't come at a worse time as she decides whether to run for president again.
The expert Sloan talked to said most workplace relationships are between co-workers, not bosses and underlings.
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