Louis CK
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  • Five women accused Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct in a report in The New York Times on Thursday.
  • They say that the comedian masturbated in front of them in person or while on the phone with them — or that he asked to masturbate in front of them.

Five women accused the comedian, filmmaker, and Emmy winner Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct in a report in The New York Times on Thursday.

The accusations span from the late 1990s to 2005. One woman said he masturbated while talking to her on the phone, and three said he masturbated in front of them in person. One said he asked to masturbate in front of her but that she declined.

Louis C.K., through his publicist, Lewis Kay, declined to respond to The Times regarding the allegations.

“Louis is not going to answer any questions,” Kay told The Times.

Representatives for Louis C.K., whose real name is Louis Székely, did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for further comment.

Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov, a Chicago-based comedy duo, told The Times that Louis C.K. invited them to his hotel room while attending the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, in 2002. As soon as they got to his hotel room, they said, Louis C.K. asked them if he could masturbate in front of them. They said they thought it was a joke.

“And then he really did it,” Goodman told The Times. “He proceeded to take all of his clothes off, and get completely naked, and started masturbating.”

Goodman and Wolov told The Times that they soon told others about the incident but that they got backlash.

Abby Schachner, a writer, illustrator, and performer, told The Times that in 2003, while on a phone call with the comedian, she could hear him masturbating. She said she had met Louis C.K. through the comedy scene and admired his work.

Schachner told The Times that the call went on for several minutes.

“I definitely wasn’t encouraging it,” she said. “You want to believe it’s not happening.”

The comedian Rebecca Corry told The Times that in 2005, when she appeared in a television pilot with Louis C.K., he asked if he could come to her dressing room to masturbate in front of her.

After she declined, Corry said, “his face got red, and he told me he had issues.”

The Times report said the show’s executive producers, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, were informed about the incident. In an email, Cox told The Times she felt “outrage and shock.” She added that they had discussed shutting down production but that Corry decided to continue.

A fifth woman, who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity, worked with Louis C.K. in the late 1990s on “The Chris Rock Show,” where he was a writer and producer. She told The Times that he repeatedly asked if he could masturbate in front of her and that she had agreed.

“It was something that I knew was wrong,” the woman said. “I think the big piece of why I said yes was because of the culture. He abused his power.”

One of the woman’s coworkers on “The Chris Rock Show” told The Times that she told him about the incident shortly after it happened.

As reported by Business Insider