This week marks two years since the Me Too movement exploded into public consciousness, and accusers are still coming forward with new allegations. In this week’s New York magazine cover story exploring the movement’s two-year impact, one anonymous woman has accused former U.S. senator Al Franken of groping her at an event in 2006, becoming the ninth woman to accuse Franken of sexual misconduct.
The woman said she was a recent college graduate working for U.S. senator Patty Murray at the time of the assault, which occurred at Murray’s annual Golden Tennis Shoes Awards where Franken was a guest speaker. The woman has claimed Franken groped her while posing for photographs. “He puts his hand on my ass,” the woman said. “And I’m just frozen. It’s so violating. And then he gives me a little squeeze on my buttock, and I am bright red. I don’t say anything at the time, but I felt deeply, deeply uncomfortable.”
The ninth woman to accuse Franken of sexual misconduct, the woman is also the fourth to accuse the former senator of groping her backside.
Franken resigned under pressure in 2017. “Two years ago, I would have sworn that I’d never done anything to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but it’s clear that I must have been doing something,” he told New York. “As I’ve said before, I feel terrible that anyone came away from an interaction with me feeling bad.”
The woman said she considered coming forward about the assault years ago, but resisted out of fear for her career. “I know that anything can be used as a flag to say, ‘Not this person,’” she said, adding that she feared “the idea that I would not get a job and would always wonder: Was it the article where I was the one who was raising my hand against a powerful man?”
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