Charlotte Bennett, the 25-year-old former staffer to Governor Andrew Cuomo, spoke publicly for the first time Thursday night since she came forward with allegations that the governor made explicit sexual advances towards her, shooting down his apology earlier in the week.

“He is a textbook abuser,” she said in an interview with CBS Evening News. “He lets his temper and his anger rule the office, but he was very sweet to me for a year in the hope that maybe one day, when he came onto me, I would think we were friends or that it was appropriate or that it was okay."

Bennett’s comments echo how former staffers described his office as a workplace ruled by fear, where they felt they had to walk on eggshells not to upset Cuomo or his senior aides. A young woman who had worked there in 2013 described being kissed on the cheek regularly by Cuomo, and was told to wear heels by another staffer whenever he was in Albany. She told Gothamist/WNYC that she preferred this at the time to the verbal tirades reserved for employees who disappointed the governor.

Cuomo, who typically briefs the public and reporters three times a week with COVID updates, had disappeared over the past week, during which time Bennett and two other women came forward describing unwanted sexual advances — Lindsey Boylan, another former aide and Anna Ruch, a woman Cuomo met once at a wedding of his top staffer Gareth Rhodes.

When Cuomo reappeared Wednesday afternoon, he apologized for making “anyone feel uncomfortable,” though he reiterated that he “never touched anyone inappropriately.” (There’s a photo of Cuomo grabbing Ruch’s face at the wedding which she felt was inappropriate.) Cuomo went on to say that he felt “embarrassed and hurt,” and said that he had never done anything he was ashamed of during his time as an elected official.

In her interview with CBS, Bennett dismissed Cuomo’s apology. “He was sexually harassing me and he has not apologized for sexually harassing me,” she said. “And he can’t even use my name.”

Bennett went into further detail about the unnerving conversations she had with Cuomo on May 15th and June 5th of last year, when they were alone together in his office.

In the May encounter, Cuomo addressed how Bennett had been sexually assaulted previously, “you were raped, you were raped and abused and assaulted,” Cuomo repeated. Bennet said it felt like he was grooming her. “Maybe I’m more willing to accept behavior because I have a history of sexual violence,” she recounted. Then on July 5th she described getting called into his office to take dictations, but then was told to turn the recorder off, at which point Cuomo started asking sexually explicit questions.

“He’s looking for a girlfriend, he’s lonely, he’s tired,” Bennett recalled. “He asked if I had trouble being with someone because of my trauma. The governor asked me if I was sensitive to intimacy.”

Bennett said she was terrified.

She recalled feeling "deeply uncomfortable," and said she knew she had to "get out of this room as soon as possible." She left the office shaken after that interaction and reluctantly returned the next day where she was once again alone in Cuomo’s office. He asked if she’d found her a girlfriend yet.

“I was shaking,” she said. “I thought, any moment something can happen and I have no power here.”

According to her attorney, Bennett told Cuomo’s Chief of Staff Jill DesRosiers and his special counsel Judith Mogul in June about the comments. She was soon transferred to another state agency. An attorney for Cuomo’s office confirmed they had interviewed Bennett about the encounter and didn’t conduct a further investigation, which was what they said Bennett had agreed to.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins,who’d previously called the allegations disturbing and said there needed to be an investigation, went a step further Thursday telling Capital Tonight that if “any further people [come] forward, I would think it would be time for him to resign.”

The walls have been closing in on the governor from all sides. Shortly after Bennett’s interview aired Thursday night, news broke from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that Cuomo’s top aides had intentionally meddled with a Health Department report last spring, removing the number of New Yorkers who were nursing home residents but who had died in hospitals, rather than inside the facilities themselves, artificially deflating the death count from nursing homes.

Polling out this week from Quinnipiac University found the governor’s approval rating had dropped 30 percentage points from the pandemic high last spring. At the time the polling took place — prior to Cuomo’s apology on Wednesday — most New Yorkers didn’t think he should resign, most don’t think he should seek re-election.

Governor Cuomo secured a book deal to write about his leadership during the pandemic, a month and a half after the doctored report came out.