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If there’s one good thing to come out of the sh-t pile that is the Trump presidency, it’s that the floodgates have opened and women from all walks of life are telling their stories of sexual harassment and assault, and not only that, they’re naming names. We should call this movement something… like, the Reclaiming My Time Movement. The Reclaiming My Time Movement has taken down Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein, James Toback and assorted Hollywood executives (mostly at Amazon). Terry Richardson is on the verge of being taken down too. On the edge of the media coverage of all of these well-deserved takedowns, there has been a quiet series of acknowledgements from several reporters and editors that there are powerful people in journalism guilty of the exact same behavior. Leon Wieseltier, the former New Republic literary editor, just lost his financial backing because of his own troubling history of sexual harassment, and I imagine more stories like that will be coming out in the weeks and months ahead.

Which brings me to Mark Halperin. Halperin is well-known to pretty much any given political-news junkie. He’s worked for many media outlets throughout his career, notably MSNBC, Bloomberg and ABC News. At ABC, he was political director of the news division throughout the 1990s and mid-2000s. He also coauthored Game Change, one of the best “inside the presidential election” books. According to a CNN investigation, Halperin also sexually harassed and assaulted multiple women when he worked at ABC.

Veteran journalist Mark Halperin sexually harassed women while he was in a powerful position at ABC News, according to five women who shared their previously undisclosed accounts with CNN and others who did not experience the alleged harassment personally, but were aware of it.

“During this period, I did pursue relationships with women that I worked with, including some junior to me,” Halperin said in a statement to CNN Wednesday night. “I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain. For that, I am deeply sorry and I apologize. Under the circumstances, I’m going to take a step back from my day-to-day work while I properly deal with this situation.”

Women who spoke to CNN say he had a dark side not made public until now. The stories of harassment shared with CNN range in nature from propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one’s breasts against her will. Three of the women who spoke to CNN described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed. Halperin denies grabbing a woman’s breasts and pressing his genitals against the three women. The women who worked with Halperin and who spoke with CNN did not report to Halperin. However, Halperin made many decisions about political coverage at ABC News, and had a voice in some critical personnel decisions. None of the women have said, though, that he ever promised anything in exchange for sex, or suggested that he would retaliate against anyone.

Still, while they no longer work with him, Halperin continues to wield influence in politics and media. The women who spoke to CNN said it was for this reason that they shared their accounts on the condition of anonymity. Others also said they still feel embarrassed about what happened to them and did not want to be publicly associated with it.

The first woman told CNN she was invited to visit his office in the early 2000s, when he was political director at ABC News, to have a soda, and said that while she was there with him he forcibly kissed her and pressed his genitals against her body.

“I went up to have a soda and talk and — he just kissed me and grabbed my boobs,” the woman said. “I just froze. I didn’t know what to do.”

When she did make her way out of his office, the woman told a friend at ABC News what had happened. That friend told CNN she remembered the woman telling her about the incident and seeing her visibly shaken.

[From CNN]

You can read the full CNN report here. Much like every other pervert we’ve discussed, Halperin had a similar pattern, according to his victims. He wouldn’t take a hint that a woman wasn’t interested, he would repeatedly come on to coworkers who explicitly said no to him, he would get too close, he would grope or try to kiss coworkers and more. Ugh. We need to stop giving men any kind of power. They always abuse it.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.