A second former aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has spoken out against the embattled governor’s unwanted sexual advances within the workplace. Bennett, 25, worked as an executive assistant and health policy advisor to the governor. This week, the New York Times released her tell-all tale about the governor’s unsolicited sexual advances against her.
Bennett said during the pandemic, Cuomo would openly complain to her about being lonely and having nobody to hug. The 63-year-old Cuomo asked Bennett, “Who did I last hug?”
The former aide said she was fearful for her job, not knowing how Cuomo would react if she refused to take the bait.
“And he was, like, ‘No, I mean like really hugged somebody,’” she told the New York Times. “I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me, and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared, and [I] was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.”
She had told Cuomo in May that she was a sexual assault survivor and said he became fixated on that fact from her past.
“The way he was repeating, ‘You were raped and abused and attacked and assaulted and betrayed,’ over and over again while looking me directly in the eyes was something out of a horror movie,” she said in the Times interview.
After complaining to Bennett about ending his relationship with celebrity chef Sandra Lee after 14 years, Cuomo told her he was willing to date somebody in the Albany area, preferably anyone over the age of 22.
In one conversation, she said she told her boss she was thinking of getting a tattoo and he recommended getting it on her butt.