Actress and activist Rose McGowan said she is “completely” standing by Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) who has accused him of sexual harassment. McGowan said she would like to see Cuomo “out” of office.
“I completely stand by Lindsey Boylan. Its truth leaks from every word on the screen that she wrote,” McGowan told Fox News. “She, none of us, should endure what she endured. If they’re doing it to her, what are they doing to constituents? What is he going to do to what he considers the little people? It’s monstrous.”
Boylan made waves on Wednesday after publishing a Medium post detailing instances of sexual harassment from the Democrat governor. The former deputy secretary for economic development said Cuomo “repeatedly touched her body, attempted to kiss her on the mouth, invited her to play strip poker,’ and overtly objectified her,” as Breitbart News detailed.
“I had complained to friends that the Governor would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs. His senior staff began keeping tabs on my whereabouts,” she wrote. “‘He is a sexist pig and you should avoid being alone with him!’ my mother texted me on November 4, 2016,” she wrote, observing that his behavior was “so normalized” female staffers.
“It was all so normalized — particularly by Melissa DeRosa and other top women around him — that only now do I realize how insidious his abuse was,” she wrote.
Cuomo’s press secretary, Caitlin Girouard, has denied Boylan’s allegations, calling them “quite simply false.”
McGowan, a victim of convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, said that it is “egregious and disgusting” that Cuomo’s alleged actions occurred “after the Weinstein allegations and during the #MeToo movement.”
“It just shows the level of sociopathy that those at the highest levels of power have,” she said.
“Imagine how tired Lindsey Boylan is? She just wants to go to work and do her job, something she studied for, worked hard for, fought for and fought to make a difference in a way she knows how,” the Scream star continued. “She has to be scared of being alone with a man who’s her superior? It’s so unfair.”
McGowan added that it sounded as if Cuomo’s office staffed effectively assisted the governor to “do this to other women.”
“What Cuomo’s office sounds like is there’s so many women who helped him do this to other women. Think of all the men in that office that also know and just keep moving up the line and they just get promoted. It’s horrible and it’s criminal,” she said, calling for some “God damn honesty.”
“Look what happened to Tara Reade, what the machine is going to do to Lindsey Boylan, look what they’ve done to me. These are powerful predators but it is so important that all of us remember we have power too,” she said.
“What I would like to see is Cuomo out. What I would like to see is their network of evil out. It’s the only way the good people can rise, be it Democrats or Republicans,” she said, calling for an “honest investigation.”
“I would like that position of power to be filled by somebody who is not dangerous and a bully and intimidating and threatening because that’s what sexual harassment is. It’s power abuse,” the Charmed actress said. “It’s trying to make the little person feel small.”
McGowan is not the only influential figure calling for action. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is calling on the Democrat governor to “immediately resign.”
The allegations come in the wake of the Cuomo administration’s continued nursing home fallout.
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