Bialek: Cain stepping down “vindication”

Despite the intense scrutiny placed on her background, family and finances, the suburban woman who first accused Herman Cain of sexual assault said Monday she has no regrets.

“This is kind of my somewhat vindication,” Sharon Bialek, of Glenview, said Monday at a news conference in Chicago. “By him stepping down ... at least I feel that I have impacted his race for the president.”

Yet, even though she is currently without a job and facing eviction from her townhouse, Bialek says she will “absolutely not” sell her story in the future.

“It’s not a huge story,” she shrugged.

On the heels of Cain’s weekend announcement that he is suspending his Republican presidential bid, Bialek and attorney Gloria Allred called the news conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago to release a Herman Cain “report,” stating that the Georgia businessman “still has not come clean” regarding his relationships and behavior with women.

Bialek said she is “saddened that a man who has risen to greatness has denied wrongdoing and placed blame elsewhere.” Bialek first revealed last month that in 1997, Cain groped her in a car following a dinner in Washington, D.C., where she had asked his help getting a job after she was laid off from the National Restaurant Association, where Cain was CEO.

“You want a job, right?” Bialek said Cain asked her when she rejected his advances.

Cain denied Bialek’s accusation.

After hearing several women had accused Cain of sexual harassment and received payouts from the National Restaurant Association, Bialek’s boyfriend at the time, former Bloomingdale physician Victor Zuckerman, said he encouraged Bialek to contact Allred.

Bialek first confronted Cain backstage at TeaCon, the Midwest Tea Party Convention held in Schaumburg Oct. 1 and sponsored by WLS-AM 890.

“I was actually trying to interview for (a job at) that station and I thought I would lend my support,” Bialek said. “You’ve got to be a little bit creative. It would be great to come to one of their events and really show I wanted to work for that company.”

The night before the convention, Bialek said she learned Cain would be its keynote speaker.

“I kind of raised my eyebrows and thought about it and thought I wanted to approach him,” she said. “So I asked someone I knew who worked for that station if they could make the introduction ... for me.”

She said that no “Democratic machine” compelled her to come forward, as Cain has said.

The final straw in the Cain campaign was a claim by an Atlanta woman that she and the candidate, who is married, had a 13-year affair.

Bialek declined to reveal the status of her job application with WLS, only noting “we’ll see what happens.”

“Honestly, I need a job. I’ve been interviewing like crazy, like millions of people out there. It’s a very, very difficult market,” Bialek said.

Bialek said she has received no apologies from Cain or his campaign, but despite that, at this time, plans no legal action.