get the popcorn
One of the women who accused GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment wants to tell her side of the story but is barred by a confidentiality agreement, her attorney in Washington said Tuesday.
Lawyer Joel P. Bennett called on the National Restaurant Association, where the woman and Cain worked in the late 1990s, to release the woman from her written promise not to talk about the allegations or disparage the trade group.
The association, which Cain headed from 1996 to 1999, has remained mum since the story broke in Politico on Sunday evening, citing a long-standing policy not to comment on personnel issues. Cain denied the sexual harassment allegations, saying they were “totally baseless and totally false.”
Bennett represents one of the two women, who attended an Ivy League school and now works for the federal government. She has avoided the limelight since the allegations were aired, and she is staying with relatives while the media stakes out her home in suburban Maryland, Bennett said.
If she is released from the confidentiality ban, “then it is whole new ballgame,” Bennett said.
“If we didn’t have a written settlement agreement that says confidential and no disparagement, I think she’d be very comfortable coming forward,” the attorney told The Post on Tuesday. “Not because she would be so hellbent on doing something to Herman Cain — I don’t know that.
“For all practical purposes, Herman Cain has already done that” — waived confidentiality, Bennett said. “But legally that might not constitute a waiver.”
Because the case is more than a dozen years old, Bennett said he no longer has the file nor the confidentiality agreement. He said his client is sending it to him for review to determine how she might speak publicly.
Bennett, who has practiced employment law for four decades since graduating from Georgetown University, said that he disagrees with Cain’s statements that the settlement agreement with his client was only for severance.
“If there hadn’t been [sexual harassment] claims, there wouldn’t have been a settlement,” Bennett said.
Over the weekend, as the story was breaking, Bennett said his client called him. At the time, he said that he had not even remembered the name of the association official who his client had accused. He said doesn’t remember going to the association offices and thinks the matter might have been handled over fax and phone, and quite expeditiously.
Calls to the restaurant association and the Cain campaign were not returned.
