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Old 11-09-2011, 10:11am   #93
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Washington (CNN) - Karen Kraushaar, who went public earlier Tuesday confirming she was one of the women who previously filed a sexual harassment claim against Herman Cain, told CNN she is considering releasing the details of her allegations against Cain.

"I have kept all of the copies of my allegations," she said. "So I believe that could happen."

In her first interview since Cain's Tuesday news conference - in which he vehemently denied ever sexually harassing anyone - Kraushaar refused to comment specifically on Cain's defense. But she did say that if the female accusers get together to air their charges publicly, she expected he would still deny them.

"He's a serial denier," she said. "He will deny if it is four or 40 women."

Even so, Kraushaar told CNN she would like to organize a joint press conference some time in the near future with some of the other women who have alleged sexual harassment against Cain.

"There is safety in numbers," she said. "It is important that it happen in one conference."

Kraushaar's attorney, Joel Bennett, told CNN that Gloria Allred and her client, Sharon Bialek, have agreed to participate.

Kraushaar added that "it's so uncomfortable for people to say what happened" - as Bialek did earlier this week with her public allegations - that "with the redaction of certain names," documents might be the least painful way for the women to tell their stories.

Saying it's "no longer a private matter" she called the alleged sexual harassment by Cain "a personally embarrassing matter."

She made the case that, as a civil servant now working for the Treasury Department, she is a "federal career employee and I can't enter into electioneering." But, she added, 'sexual harassment is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It's an American problem."

Kraushaar told CNN she entered into a $46,000 sexual harassment settlement with the National Restaurant Association in 1999 and said she was aware of the other settlement the association previously reached with a different employee.

"I lived by the strictures of the confidentiality agreement for 12 years," she told CNN. But when approached by Politico, she felt like she couldn't deny the story. The site "had two names," she said. "At that point, if I deny, I'm lying."

Kraushaar knows something about the media. She currently serves as the spokesman for a bureau within the Treasury Department.

She also indicated that Cain's story about her - in which he says that he gesturing that her she is the same height as his wife - has nothing to do with her harassment allegations

"A comment like that is so innocuous it wasn't even a part of my complaint," she said, allowing that it sounds "vaguely familiar." Without disclosing details, she said that there was "an incident in my office that was part of my complaint" that was the "inappropriate behavior."

Trying to pre-empt criticism, she also confirmed that she had filed one complaint while working at another federal agency about not being able to telecommute after a car accident while a colleague was able to do so - and she felt it was unfair. She says she was always an employee in good standing.
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