WASHINGTON (DC)
AFP
December 2, 2018
Well-known author and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on Sunday denied allegations by three women of sexual misconduct spanning several decades.
Tyson, 60, who has built a successful career on television and in his books explaining and popularizing science, had remained largely silent as three different women lodged complaints dating as far back as 1984.
But on Sunday, in a lengthy Facebook post, he responded.
“For a variety of reasons,” he wrote, “most justified, some unjustified, men accused of sexual impropriety in today’s ‘me-too’ climate are presumed to be guilty by the court of public opinion.”
While calling himself a “loving husband… a scientist and educator,” he wrote that “accusations can damage a reputation and a marriage. Sometimes irreversibly.”
In the first case, a woman alleged that Tyson drugged and raped her when both were graduate students at the University of Texas in 1984. She has said she remembered passing out after he gave her a drink and waking up later, naked, on his bed.
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