 |
| TANYA SELVARATNAM |
A SRI LANKAN woman is among those whose accusations of assault against former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressured him to resign.
Film producer and author Tanya Selvaratnam, who immigrated to the U.S. with her family. She was raised in California before attending Harvard and becoming a social activist. Selvaratnam is an Emmy-nominated and Webby-winning producer with two decades working in the arts and social justice.
She is also one of four woman who accused New York's Attorney General Schneiderman of physical abuse in an article in the New Yorker.
“After I found out that other women had been abused by Attorney General Schneiderman in a similar manner many years before me,” Selvaratnam said in a statement released to Art-Net, “I wondered, who’s next, and knew something needed to be done. So I chose to come forward both to protect women who might enter into a relationship with him in the future but also to raise awareness around the issue of intimate partner violence.”
“After I found out that other women had been abused by Attorney General Schneiderman in a similar manner many years before me,” Selvaratnam said in a statement released to Art-Net, “I wondered, who’s next, and knew something needed to be done. So I chose to come forward both to protect women who might enter into a relationship with him in the future but also to raise awareness around the issue of intimate partner violence.”
Michelle Manning Barish, the other woman who went public with her relationship with Schneiderman shared similar details.
Selvaratnam, who wrote the book "The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism and the Reality of the Biological Clock," said he met New York's Attorney General at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016 and had a relationship with him for a year.
Selvaratnam, who wrote the book "The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism and the Reality of the Biological Clock," said he met New York's Attorney General at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016 and had a relationship with him for a year.
She shared intimate details of her relationship with Schneiderman in the New Yorker article.
“He was obsessed with having a threesome, and said it was my job to find a woman,” she said in the New Yorker. “He said he’d have nothing to look forward to if I didn’t, and would hit me until I agreed.” She recalls, “Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did. He started calling me his ‘brown slave’ and demanding that I repeat that I was his property.”
She said Schneiderman often spat at her and choked her until she could barely breathe. Selvaratnam called him a “misogynist and sexual sadist.”
Schneiderman resigned three hours after the article was published, but denied the allegations.
He said he was only engaged in “role playing and other consensual activity.” He said he only resigned because the accusations would “effectively prevent him from leading the office’s work at a critical time.”
“He was obsessed with having a threesome, and said it was my job to find a woman,” she said in the New Yorker. “He said he’d have nothing to look forward to if I didn’t, and would hit me until I agreed.” She recalls, “Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did. He started calling me his ‘brown slave’ and demanding that I repeat that I was his property.”
She said Schneiderman often spat at her and choked her until she could barely breathe. Selvaratnam called him a “misogynist and sexual sadist.”
Schneiderman resigned three hours after the article was published, but denied the allegations.
He said he was only engaged in “role playing and other consensual activity.” He said he only resigned because the accusations would “effectively prevent him from leading the office’s work at a critical time.”
(Views From the Edge contributed to this report.)
________________________________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment