Well, Schneiderman was an excellent attorney general, but a disturbed person
whose behavior with the women with whom he had long term relationships, was
pathological. So he has retired and most probably, our next NY attorney general
will be inferior. But our President, the leader of the free world, has hundreds
of abusive short term relationships with women, treats them and his wives like
garbage, and talks trash about all of the women who displease him publicly, and
he isn't resigning.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2018 8:35 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: `NY AG Eric Schneiderman Resigns Amid Sexual
Abuse Allegations
Sly Sharks in playful Porpoise Clothing.
From honest faced politicians to rubber faced comedians, we have all been
betrayed. But it goes far beyond individual betrayal.
It is us, all of us. We allowed the monster to enter our world. And when we
began to understand that there was more than just "good old boys" having a
little fun, and we knew that uncle Bob's hand was not just accidentally
brushing our little crotches, and patting our skinny little butts, we looked to
mom and dad and they were laughing and smiling, and taking another drink. We
all played "let's Pretend" as
the menace grew. And we all accepted the changes that came about.
And we all felt there was nothing wrong with a bit of messing around.
And if we didn't do it ourselves, we didn't let it affect how we felt about our
friends and relatives. And one fine day we learned that America's most beloved
funny man was charged with drugging and raping women. Not just one or two, but
dozens. And then the tires all came off the bus, and one great man after
another was caught with their pants down and their hands in the nooky bowl.
And we showered great shame upon them, and cast them into outer darkness. And
then we went back to our recliners and our TV's feeling vindicated.
And the Monster stirred and smirked. All was going to be just fine...really
fine.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/8/18, abby <aevincent@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When I first heard the headline, I felt betrayed. He did do a lot for
women and against Trump and Trumpism. I read the article, and I can't
begin to imagine the betrayal his victims felt.
I volunteered for an abuse hotline for years and never heard anyone
refer to hard slapping and choking as sexual role playing.
Abby
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam ;
Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 12:37 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] `NY AG Eric Schneiderman Resigns Amid
Sexual Abuse Allegations
This is especially upsetting to me because Schneiderman has been such
a fantastic attorney general.
Miriam
NY AG Eric Schneiderman Resigns Amid Sexual Abuse Allegations By Jane
Mayer and Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker
08 May 18
Eric Schneiderman has raised his profile as a voice against sexual
misconduct. Now, after suing Harvey Weinstein, he faces a #MeToo
reckoning of his own. Three hours after the publication of this story,
Schneiderman resigned from his position. "While these allegations are
unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office,
they will effectively prevent me from leading the office's work at
this critical time," he said in a statement. "I therefore resign my
office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018."
Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, has long been a
liberal Democratic champion of women's rights, and recently he has
become an outspoken figure in the #MeToo movement against sexual
harassment. As New York State's highest-ranking law-enforcement
officer, Schneiderman, who is sixty-three, has used his authority to
take legal action against the disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein,
and to demand greater compensation for the victims of Weinstein's
alleged sexual crimes. Last month, when the Times and this magazine
were awarded a joint Pulitzer Prize for coverage of sexual harassment,
Schneiderman issued a congratulatory tweet, praising "the brave women
and men who spoke up about the sexual harassment they had endured at
the hands of powerful men." Without these women, he noted, "there
would not be the critical national reckoning under way."
Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence
as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the
distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or
encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to
nonconsensual physical violence.
All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the
women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to
The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could
protect other women. They allege that he repeatedly hit them, often
after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent.
Manning Barish and Selvaratnam categorize the abuse he inflicted on
them as "assault." They did not report their allegations to the police
at the time, but both say that they eventually sought medical
attention after having been slapped hard across the ear and face, and
also choked. Selvaratnam says that Schneiderman warned her he could
have her followed and her phones tapped, and both say that he
threatened to kill them if they broke up with him. (Schneiderman's
spokesperson said that he "never made any of these threats.")
A third former romantic partner of Schneiderman's told Manning Barish
and Selvaratnam that he also repeatedly subjected her to nonconsensual
physical violence, but she told them that she is too frightened of him
to come forward. (The New Yorker has independently vetted the accounts
that they gave of her allegations.) A fourth woman, an attorney who
has held prominent positions in the New York legal community, says
that Schneiderman made an advance toward her; when she rebuffed him,
he slapped her across the face with such force that it left a mark
that lingered the next day. She recalls screaming in surprise and
pain, and beginning to cry, and says that she felt frightened. She has
asked to remain unidentified, but shared a photograph of the injury
with The New Yorker.
In a statement, Schneiderman said, "In the privacy of intimate
relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual
sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in
nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross."
***
Manning Barish was romantically involved with Schneiderman from the
summer of 2013 until New Year's Day in 2015. Selvaratnam was with him
from the summer of 2016 until the fall of 2017. Both are articulate,
progressive Democratic feminists in their forties who live in
Manhattan. They work and socialize in different circles, and although
they have become aware of each other's stories, they have only a few
overlapping acquaintances; to this day, they have never spoken to each
other. Over the past year, both watched with admiration as other women
spoke out about sexual misconduct. But, as Schneiderman used the
authority of his office to assume a major role in the #MeToo movement, their
anguish and anger grew.
In February, four months after the first stories about Weinstein
broke, Schneiderman announced that his office was filing a
civil-rights suit against him. At a press conference, he denounced
Weinstein, saying, "We have never seen anything as despicable as what
we've seen right here." On May 2nd, at the direction of Governor
Andrew Cuomo, Schneiderman launched an investigation into the past
handling of criminal complaints against Weinstein by the Manhattan
District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., and the New York City Police
Department. (In 2015, Vance declined to bring criminal charges against
Weinstein, saying that he lacked sufficient evidence-a decision
criticized by activist groups.) In a speech, Cuomo explained that
"sexual-assault complaints must be pursued aggressively, and to the
fullest extent of the law." The expanding investigation of the
Weinstein case puts Schneiderman at the center of one of the most
significant sexual-misconduct cases in recent history.
Schneiderman's activism on behalf of feminist causes has increasingly
won him praise from women's groups. On May 1st, the New York-based
National Institute for Reproductive Health honored him as one of three
"Champions of Choice" at its annual fund-raising luncheon. Accepting
the award, Schneiderman said, "If a woman cannot control her body, she
is not truly equal." But, as Manning Barish sees it, "you cannot be a
champion of women when you are hitting them and choking them in bed,
and saying to them, 'You're a fucking whore.' " She says of
Schneiderman's involvement in the Weinstein investigation, "How can
you put a perpetrator in charge of the country's most important
sexual-assault case?" Selvaratnam describes Schneiderman as "a Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" figure, and says that seeing him lauded as a
supporter of women has made her "feel sick," adding, "This is a man
who has staked his entire career, his personal narrative, on being a
champion for women publicly. But he abuses them privately. He needs to
be called out."
Manning Barish notes that many of her friends attended the N.I.R.H.
luncheon. "His hypocrisy is epic," she says. "He's fooled so many people."
Manning Barish includes herself among them. She says that she met
Schneiderman in July, 2013, through mutual friends. She had become a
blogger and political activist after opposing her younger brother's
deployment to Iraq and working with groups such as MoveOn.org.
Amicably divorced from Chris Barish, a hospitality-industry executive,
she was a single mother with a young daughter and socially prominent
friends. Schneiderman, who was rising in Democratic politics after
being elected attorney general, in 2010, was also divorced. His
ex-wife, Jennifer Cunningham, a lobbyist and political strategist at
the firm SKDKnickerbocker, currently serves as one of his political
consultants. They have a grown daughter.
Manning Barish says that she fell quickly for Schneiderman and was
happy to be involved with someone who seemed to share her progressive
idealism and enjoy her feistiness. Page Six chronicled the romance,
calling her a "ravishing redhead" and noting that, at a fund-raiser,
the television producer Norman Lear had introduced her as Schneiderman's
"bride-to-be."
But Manning Barish began to see signs of controlling and abusive behavior.
Soon after she started dating Schneiderman, he told her to remove a
small tattoo from her wrist; it wasn't appropriate, he said, if she
were to become the wife of a politician. The process of having it
removed was painful and expensive. In retrospect, she says, it was the
first step in trying to control her body. "Taking a strong woman and
tearing her to pieces is his jam," she says.
About four weeks after they became physically involved, she says,
Schneiderman grew violent. One night, they were in the bedroom of his
Upper West Side apartment, still clothed but getting ready for bed,
and lightly baiting each other. As she recalls it, he called her "a
whore," and she talked back. They had both been drinking, and her
recollection of their conversation is blurry, but what happened next
remains vivid. Schneiderman, she says, backed her up to the edge of
his bed. "All of a sudden, he just slapped me, open-handed and with
great force, across the face, landing the blow directly onto my ear,"
Manning Barish says. "It was horrendous. It just came out of nowhere.
My ear was ringing. I lost my balance and fell backward onto the bed.
I sprang up, but at this point there was very little room between the
bed and him. I got up to try to shove him back, or take a swing, and
he pushed me back down. He then used his body weight to hold me down,
and he began to choke me. The choking was very hard. It was really
bad. I kicked. In every fibre, I felt I was being beaten by a man."
She finally freed herself and got back on her feet. "I was crying and
in shock," she says. She recalls shouting, "Are you crazy?" To her
astonishment, Schneiderman accused her of scratching him. At one
point-she can't remember if it was at this moment or in a later
conversation-he told her, "You know, hitting an officer of the law is a
felony."
After the incident, Manning Barish left the apartment, telling him
that she would never come back. "I want to make it absolutely clear," she
says.
"This
was under no circumstances a sex game gone wrong. This did not happen
while we were having sex. I was fully dressed and remained that way.
It was completely unexpected and shocking. I did not consent to physical
assault."
In the following days, Manning Barish confided to three close female
friends that Schneiderman had hit her. All of them have confirmed this
to The New Yorker. "She was distraught," one of the friends, a
high-profile media figure, says. "She was very, very upset. This
wasn't a gentle smack. He clocked her ear. I was shocked." She notes,
"Michelle had mentioned that he drank a lot, and that he changed under
the influence of alcohol, but I'd never anticipated that he would be
violent." The friend describes Manning Barish as having seemed "sad"
and "torn," because "she'd really wanted the relationship to work."
The novelist Salman Rushdie, who dated Manning Barish before
Schneiderman did, and who has been her close friend for nearly fifteen
years, says that she confided in him as well. "She called me and told me he
had hit her,"
Rushdie recalls. "She was obviously very upset. I was horrified." In
his view, Schneiderman's behavior does not fall into the kind of gray
area that should remain private. "It was clear to me that it crossed a
line," he says.
Rushdie, who describes Manning Barish as "a very truthful person, in
my experience," advised her to stay away from Schneiderman.
But Manning Barish went back to him, a decision that she regrets.
After the attack, she says, Schneiderman "called and called" her. A
few days later, on a weekday afternoon, his security detail drove him
to her apartment, and he showed up at her door with an armload of
flowers and a case of wine. She found the wine surprising, given the
fact that alcohol had fuelled his violent behavior. She recalls saying
over and over, "You hit me! You hurt me! You should never hit a
woman!" But he didn't want to talk about having hit her. "The hitting
was not an issue for him," she says. Before long, they reconciled.
Manning Barish says that her ear bothered her for months. It often
felt painful and clogged, and she kept hearing odd gurgling sounds.
Once, blood trickled out, reaching her collarbone. Eventually, Manning
Barish sought medical help from Dr. Gwen Korovin, an ear, nose, and throat
specialist.
Manning Barish shared her medical records with The New Yorker. They
confirm that, on September 13, 2014, Korovin found and removed "dried bloody
crust"
from Manning Barish's ear. Manning Barish thought that the slap might
have caused the injury, but when Korovin asked her what had happened
she said that she might have injured herself with a Q-tip. "I was protecting
Eric,"
Manning Barish says. "And I was ashamed. For victims, shame plays a
huge role in most of these stories. I want people to know that."
Korovin was asked by The New Yorker if the injury could have been caused by a
slap.
"Yes, it could be consistent with a slap," she said. "You could
perforate an eardrum in a lot of ways, with a Q-tip or with a slap."
Manning Barish and Schneiderman were together, off and on, for nearly
two years. She says that when they had sex he often slapped her across
the face without her consent, and that she felt "emotionally battered"
by cruel remarks that he made. She says that he criticized how she
looked and dressed, and "controlled what I ate." Manning Barish, who
is five feet seven, lost thirty pounds, falling to a hundred and
three. In a photograph from the period, she looks emaciated; her hair,
she recalls, started to fall out. Nevertheless, he squeezed her legs
and called them "chubby."
Manning Barish says that Schneiderman pressed her to consume huge
amounts of alcohol. She recalls, "I would come over for dinner. An
already half-empty bottle of red wine would be on the counter. He had
had a head start. 'Very stressful day,' he would say." Sometimes, if
she didn't drink quickly enough, she says, he would "come to me like a
baby who wouldn't eat its food, and hold the glass to my lips while
holding my face, and sweetly but forcefully, like a parent, say, 'Come
on, Mimi, drink, drink, drink,' and essentially force me-at times
actually spilling it down my chin and onto my chest." Schneiderman,
she recalls, "would almost always drink two bottles of wine in a
night, then bring a bottle of Scotch into the bedroom. He would get
absolutely plastered five nights out of seven." On one occasion, she
recalls, "he literally fell on his face in my kitchen, straight down,
like a tree falling." Another evening, he smashed his leg against an
open drawer, cutting it so badly that "there was blood all over the
place." She bandaged it, but the next day she went to his office to
change the dressing, because the bleeding hadn't stopped.
Manning Barish says that Schneiderman also took prescription
tranquillizers, and often asked her to refill a prescription that she
had for Xanax, so that he could reserve "about half" the pills for
himself. (Schneiderman's spokesperson said that he has "never
commandeered anyone's medications.") Sometimes in bed, she recalls, he
would be "shaking me and grabbing my face"
while demanding that she repeat such things as "I'm a little whore."
She says that he also told her, "If you ever left me, I'd kill you."
Evan Stark, a forensic social worker and an emeritus professor at
Rutgers, is the author of a landmark book, "Coercive Control," in
which he argues that domestic abuse is just as often psychological as it is
physical.
Abusive men, he writes, often "terrorize" and "control" their partners
by demeaning them, particularly about the traits or accomplishments of
which they are proudest. Manning Barish says that Schneiderman often
mocked her political activism. When she told him of her plan to attend
an anti-gun demonstration with various political figures and a group
of parents from Sandy Hook Elementary School, he dismissed the effort,
calling the demonstrators "losers." He added, "Go ahead, if it makes
you feel better to do your little political things." When she was
using her computer, he'd sometimes say, "Oh, look at little Mimi. So
cute-she's working!" He told Manning Barish that, because she had
childcare, she wasn't "a real single mother."
Manning Barish broke up with Schneiderman a second time, and then got
back together with him. He'd been talking about marrying her, she
says, and she somehow convinced herself that the real problem between
them was her fear of commitment. In January, 2015, she ended the
relationship a third time, feeling degraded. After that, they got
together romantically a few more times, but since 2016 she has been in
touch with him only sporadically.
Since the #MeToo movement began, Manning Barish has been active on
social-media platforms, cheering on women who have spoken out,
including those whose accusations prompted the resignation of the
Minnesota senator Al Franken, a widely admired Democrat. Once, she
made an oblique reference to Schneiderman on social media, in
connection with a political issue. He called her and, in a tone that
she describes as "nasty," said, "Don't ever write about me. You don't
want to do that." Manning Barish says that she took his remarks as a
threat, just as she took seriously a comment that he'd once made after
she objected to him "yanking" her across a street. She recalls saying
to him, "Jaywalking is against the law," and him responding, "I am the
law." Manning Barish says, "If there is a sentence that sums him up,
it's that."
***
Schneiderman was elected to the New York State Senate in 1998, and
served for twelve years. He wrote many laws, including one that
created specific penalties for strangulation. He introduced the bill
in 2010, after chairing a committee that investigated
domestic-violence charges against the former state senator Hiram
Monserrate, a Democrat, who was expelled from the legislature after having
been convicted of assaulting his girlfriend.
During
the hearings, the legislators learned that New York State imposed no
specific criminal penalty for choking, even though it is a common
prelude to domestic-violence homicides. Not only did Schneiderman's
bill make life-threatening strangulation a grave crime; it also
criminalized less serious cases involving "an intent to impede
breathing" as misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in prison. "I'm
just sorry it took us so long in New York State to do this,"
Schneiderman declared at the time. "I think this will save a lot of
lives."
Jennifer Friedman, a legal expert on domestic violence, says that she
cannot square Schneiderman's public and private behavior. Anyone
knowledgeable about intimate-partner violence, she says, knows that
choking is "a known lethality indicator." She adds, "I cannot fathom
that someone who drafted the legislation on strangulation is
unfamiliar with such concepts." She also says, "A slap is not just a
slap-it reverberates through the rest of the relationship, making her
afraid of setting him off." She adds, "People aren't usually
prosecuted for it, but, in the state of New York, slapping is assault
when it results in pain or physical injury."
In the summer of 2016, the attorney general may have crossed this line
again. He went to a party in the Hamptons, where he drank heavily, and
invited another guest-a woman he'd known for some time-to join him at
an after-party. An accomplished Ivy League-educated lawyer with
government experience, she had worked closely with his office in the
past, and supported him politically. She says that she agreed to let a
man in Schneiderman's security detail drive them to the next
destination. But, when they arrived at the house, there was no party;
it was where Schneiderman was staying. The security officer left the
property.
The lawyer and Schneiderman began making out, but he said things that
repelled her. He told the woman, a divorced mother, that professional
women with big jobs and children had so many decisions to make that,
when it came to sex, they secretly wanted men to take charge. She
recalls him saying, "Yeah, you act a certain way and look a certain
way, but I know that at heart you are a dirty little slut. You want to
be my whore." He became more sexually aggressive, but she was repulsed
by his talk, and pulled away from him. She says that "suddenly-at
least, in my mind's eye-he drew back, and there was a moment where I
was, like, 'What's happening?' " Then, she recalls, "He slapped me
across the face hard, twice," adding, "I was stunned."
Schneiderman hit her so hard, she says, that the blow left a red handprint.
"What the fuck did you just do?" she screamed, and started to sob. "I
couldn't believe it," she recalls. "For a split second, I was scared."
She notes that, in all her years of dating, she has never been in a
situation like the one with Schneiderman. "He just really smacked me," she
says.
When she told him that she wanted to leave, she recalls, he started to
"freak out," saying that he'd misjudged her. "You'd really be surprised,"
he
claimed. "A lot of women like it. They don't always think they like
it, but then they do, and they ask for more." She again demanded to be taken
home.
They got into his car, and it quickly became apparent how intoxicated
he was. As he drove, weaving along back roads, she was terrified that
he'd kill not just her but another driver. She says that Schneiderman
"broke the law at least once that night." ("This is untrue,"
Schneiderman's spokesperson
said.)
The next day, she told two friends, and sent them a photograph of the
mark on her face. (Both women corroborate this.) Another photograph of
the lawyer, taken later that day at a family birthday party, shows
faint raised marks splayed on her cheek. One of the friends says of
Schneiderman, "He seemed not to know what the word 'consent' means."
Given the woman's prominence in the legal sphere, Schneiderman's
actions had exposed him to tremendous risk. Yet she took no official
action against him.
"Now that I know it's part of a pattern, I think, God, I should have
reported it," she says. "But, back then, I believed that it was a
one-time incident. And I thought, He's a good attorney general, he's
doing good things. I didn't want to jeopardize that." She notes that
he did not hit her again, after she protested. Nevertheless, she says
of the assault, "I knew it was wrong," adding, "Our top law officer,
this guy with a platform for women's rights, just smacked away so much
of what I thought he stood for."
***
Tanya Selvaratnam is the author of "The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism,
and the Reality of the Biological Clock," which explores infertility
issues; she is also an actor and a film producer, as well as a
supporter of feminist and progressive social causes. She, too, is
divorced. In 2016, she attended the Democratic National Convention, in
Philadelphia, where Schneiderman introduced himself to her. She says
that their first encounter felt "like kismet." They had both gone to
Harvard: she as an undergraduate and a graduate student, he as a law
student. She was impressed when he expressed an interest in meditation
and Buddhism. They had both studied Chinese, and, when he asked, in
Mandarin, if she spoke the language, she answered, "Wo shuo keshi bu
tai liuli"-"Yes, but not fluently."
They began dating, and appeared to be a happy couple. Selvaratnam all
but lived in his apartment, attending political functions and dinners
with his friends and donors, and brainstorming with him on speeches and
projects.
But, as she puts it, "it was a fairy tale that became a nightmare."
Although
Schneiderman often doted on her, he demanded that she spend more and
more time with him, and he began physically abusing her in bed. "The
slaps started after we'd gotten to know each other," she recalls. "It
was at first as if he were testing me. Then it got stronger and
harder." Selvaratnam says, "It wasn't consensual. This wasn't sexual
playacting. This was abusive, demeaning, threatening behavior."
When Schneiderman was violent, he often made sexual demands. "He was
obsessed with having a threesome, and said it was my job to find a woman,"
she says. "He said he'd have nothing to look forward to if I didn't,
and would hit me until I agreed." (She had no intention of having a
threesome.) She recalls, "Sometimes, he'd tell me to call him Master,
and he'd slap me until I did." Selvaratnam, who was born in Sri Lanka,
has dark skin, and she recalls that "he started calling me his 'brown
slave' and demanding that I repeat that I was 'his property.' "
The abuse escalated. Schneiderman not only slapped her across the
face, often four or five times, back and forth, with his open hand; he
also spat at her and choked her. "He was cutting off my ability to
breathe," she says.
Eventually, she says, "we could rarely have sex without him beating
me." In her view, Schneiderman "is a misogynist and a sexual sadist."
She says that she often asked him to stop hurting her, and tried to
push him away. At other times, she gave in, rationalizing that she
could tolerate the violence if it happened only once a week or so
during sex. But "the emotional and verbal abuse started increasing,"
she says, and "the belittling and demeaning of me carried over into
our nonsexual encounters." He told her to get plastic surgery to
remove scars on her torso that had resulted from an operation to
remove cancerous tumors. He criticized her hair and said that she
should get breast implants and buy different clothes. He mocked some
of her friends as "ditzes," and, when these women attended a birthday
celebration for her, he demanded that she leave just as the cake was
arriving. "I began to feel like I was in Hell," she says.
Like Manning Barish, Selvaratnam says that Schneiderman routinely
drank heavily-a bottle and a half of wine, or more. He also took
sedatives, she says, and pushed her to drink with him, saying, "Drink
your bourbon, Turnip"-his nickname for her. In the middle of the
night, he staggered through the apartment, as if in a trance. "I've
never seen anyone that messed up," she recalls. "It was like sleeping
next to a monster." The next morning, she says, he'd seem fine, but
often berated her for not having kept him away from the alcohol. His
emotional state seemed to worsen after the
2016 Presidential election. He had counted on forging an ambitious
partnership with a White House led by Hillary Clinton. Instead, the
Presidency had gone to Donald Trump. Earlier, Schneiderman's office
had sued Trump University for civil fraud, and Trump had countersued
Schneiderman personally.
On the morning of January 19, 2017, the day before Trump's
Inauguration, Schneiderman called Selvaratnam from a hospital
emergency room. She recalls, "He told me that he'd been drinking the
night before he fell down. He didn't realize he'd cut himself, and got
into bed, and when he woke up he was in a pool of blood." Selvaratnam
rushed to the hospital. Schneiderman had several stitches above his
left eye; his face was puffy and bruised. He had her send his press
secretary a photograph of the injury, and they agreed to cancel a
public appearance. In the image, which was shared with The New Yorker,
Schneiderman has a black eye and a bandage across the left side of his
forehead. Schneiderman then called Cunningham, his ex-wife and
political consultant, and they agreed that he and Selvaratnam should
tell anyone who asked about the injury that he had fallen "while
running." (A spokesperson for Schneiderman said, "One morning, Mr.
Schneiderman fell in the bathroom while completely sober, hit his head, and
had to go the E.R. for stitches.
Because he was embarrassed to tell his staff he fell in the bathroom,
he told them he fell while running." Cunningham, in a statement issued
shortly after this story was published online, said, "I've known Eric
for nearly thirty-five years as a husband, father, and friend. These
allegations are completely inconsistent with the man I know, who has
always been someone of the highest character, outstanding values, and
a loving father. I find it impossible to believe these allegations are
true.")
Selvaratnam understands how incomprehensible it may seem that she
stayed in such an abusive relationship for more than a year. But, she
says, "now I see how independent women get stuck in one." The physical
abuse, she notes, "happens quickly": "He's drunk, and you're naked and
at your most vulnerable. It's so disorienting. You lose a little of
who you are." She kept telling herself that she could help him change,
and tried to get him to see a therapist. At times, she blamed herself
for his behavior. "I was scared what he might do if I left him," she
says. "He had said he would have to kill me if we broke up, on
multiple occasions. He also told me he could have me followed and
could tap my phone."
It's unclear if Schneiderman was serious when he made such remarks,
but Selvaratnam says that she felt intimidated. Jacquelyn Campbell, a
professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, is the
author of a danger-assessment checklist that helps authorities gauge
the likelihood of homicide in domestic-violence situations. She says,
"It's often true that women don't know whether to take threats to kill
seriously. But we should always take threats seriously. It's
categorized as a violent act, and you can report someone to the police for
it."
Selvaratnam began to spend more time apart from Schneiderman, and last
fall she ended the relationship. She'd been suffering from ringing in
her ears, and sometimes had vertigo. After the breakup, she, like
Manning Barish, sought medical help from an ear, nose, and throat
specialist. The doctor could find no specific cause for her ailments.
The writer Danzy Senna, a close friend of Selvaratnam's, recalls, "She was
thin, fragile, and shaky."
Selvaratnam confided to Senna about the abuse, and Senna was so
shocked that she wrote down the details and e-mailed the account to
her husband, so that there would be a dated copy of it should any harm
come to her friend.
Senna's document, which she shared with The New Yorker, is dated
September 16, 2017, and says, in part, "She told me that her boyfriend
of a year, Eric Schneiderman, the Attorney General of New York, has
been choking, beating, and threatening her for the entirety of their
relationship, and that several times he threatened to have her killed
if she ever tried to leave him. She said he knows that she has a lot
of really damning information about him, his alcoholism, sexual
deviance, and drug use, and she worries about her safety."
Senna advised Selvaratnam to retrieve her belongings from his
apartment. On November 3, 2017, she did so, with another
friend-Jennifer Gonnerman, a staff writer at this magazine. As they
carried her things outside, they talked about the fact that
Selvaratnam couldn't possibly be the only woman who had seen this side
of Schneiderman. Gonnerman asked her who else he had dated.
Selvaratnam knew of one former girlfriend-not Manning Barish-and described
where she had worked.
The next day, Gonnerman happened to run into a male friend who had
once worked with the former girlfriend. Gonnerman asked him if he'd
ever known anyone who had dated Schneiderman. He said yes: a close friend of
his had.
Without divulging anything, Gonnerman asked, "So how did that work
out?" He answered, "He used to spit on her and slap her during sex."
Gonnerman told Selvaratnam about the other victim. "She was very
traumatized," Gonnerman recalls. "On the one hand, she was relieved to
learn it had happened before, but on the other it was, like, 'Why
hasn't anyone stopped him?' "
Selvaratnam says, "I wished someone had warned me. And I wondered,
Who's next?" She notes, "I was not planning to come forward, until I
found out there was another woman. The silence of women before me
meant that I'd suffered, too. I felt, I will not be able to live with
myself if I hear of him doing this to another woman years or months from now."
Selvaratnam reached out to the former girlfriend, and they agreed to meet.
In February, Selvaratnam recalls, they sat outside on a bench for
ninety minutes, and their stories came flooding forth. Selvaratnam
says that she was astounded to discover how similar their experiences had
been.
Selvaratnam kept notes about her exchanges with the former girlfriend,
and she described them to The New Yorker. According to these notes,
the former girlfriend told Selvaratnam that she had been in love with
Schneiderman, but that in bed he had routinely slapped her hard across
the ear and the face, as tears rolled down her cheeks. He also choked
her and spat at her. Not all the abuse had taken place in a sexual
context. She said that Schneiderman had once slapped her during an
argument they'd had while getting dressed to go out. The blow left a
handprint on her back; the next day, the spot still hurt. When the
former girlfriend objected to this mistreatment, he told her that she
simply wasn't "liberated" enough. Just as Schneiderman had done with
the other women, he had pushed her to drink with him and to set up a
threesome, and he had belittled her work and appearance, saying in her
case that she had fat legs and needed Botox.
After the former girlfriend ended the relationship, she told several
friends about the abuse. A number of them advised her to keep the
story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a
politician for the Democrats to lose. She described this response as
heartbreaking. And when Schneiderman heard that she had turned against
him, she said, he warned her that politics was a tough and personal
business, and that she'd better be careful. She told Selvaratnam that
she had taken this as a threat.
The former girlfriend told Selvaratnam she found it "shameless" that
Schneiderman was casting himself as a leading supporter of the #MeToo
movement. She promised to support Selvaratnam if she spoke out, but
she wasn't sure that she could risk joining her. The former girlfriend
told Selvaratnam she'd once been so afraid of Schneiderman that she'd
written down an extensive account of the abuse, locked the document in
a safe-deposit box, and given keys to two friends.
***
In February, the news broke that Rob Porter, a top aide in the Trump
White House, was resigning, amid allegations that he'd abused his two
ex-wives.
One of the women, Colbie Holderness, released a photograph of herself
taken after he'd allegedly given her a black eye. The image resonated
deeply among the women who had dated Schneiderman. Manning Barish
recalls, "After Rob Porter, I was struggling about whether to come
forward. I felt guilt and shame that I was encouraging other women to
speak out but wasn't doing the same. I was a hypocrite. I was in
tears." Her friends told her that she risked becoming known mainly for
being Schneiderman's victim, and she initially agreed to let the
matter go. But, after thinking it over, she told them, "If he's done
this to more than one woman, I'm going to say something."
After Porter's resignation, Selvaratnam felt more determined than ever
to speak out about Schneiderman and the broader issue of
intimate-partner violence. As this story was being reported, Manning
Barish became aware that there were other victims, and decided that
she had three choices: "I can lie. I can be silent, which is being
complicit, and a betrayal of the other women. Or I can tell the
truth." She concluded, "I'm choosing No. 3."
Manning Barish is aware of the risks faced by women who take on
powerful politicians, and isn't relishing the prospect of taking on
the attorney general. "It's hard," she says. "It affects your life,
and not in a positive way."
Selvaratnam says that she considered filing an ethics complaint
against Schneiderman, or bringing a civil suit, but the various legal
options she considered were always connected to Schneiderman in some
way. Meanwhile, at least eight members of Congress had resigned, or
announced plans to retire, after being accused of sexual misconduct.
In Missouri, the legislature called a special session to take up the
impeachment of Governor Eric Greitens, who had been accused of
slapping, restraining, and belittling a woman during an affair.
Greitens has denied the allegations, but he is facing a felony charge
stemming from the woman's assertion that he took compromising
photographs of her, in an effort to stop her from speaking out.
Selvaratnam, by contrast, feels caught up in circumstances that have
given her only one real choice: to go public. "It's torturous for me to do
this,"
she says. "I like my life." Of this article, she says, "I wish my name
did not have to be in it," and notes, of Schneiderman, "I know it's
going to be my word against his, because I don't have photos of
bruises, and I don't have a police report." Schneiderman's accusers,
she feels, are in an unusually difficult situation. As she puts it,
"What do you do if your abuser is the top law-enforcement official in the
state?"
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
