eric schneiderman

Tanya speaks in her own words here: What Happened After I Shared My Story of Abuse by New York’s Attorney General, in the New York Times, Oct 6, 2019

Ms. Selvaratnam is a multi-accomplished professional:

• She’s the author of the 2014 book, “The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism and the Reality of the Biological Clock” as well as the forthcoming Assume Nothing: A Memoir of Intimate Violence.
• She’s produced numerous film projects, including the Emmy-nominated Born To Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity and is also an actor
• In 2016, she was a video producer for Gays Against Guns, formed in response to the Pulse nightclub massacre. 
• Her activism and civic contributions since the mid 90’s have included everything from The Ms. Foundation to the World Health Organization to a benefit titled Artists for Tsunami Relief, in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

She is also a woman who spent a year in a physically and psychologically abusive romantic partnership with Eric Schneiderman.

Selvaratnam met Schneiderman at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 2016, after which she began dating him. They were together through the fall of 2017, during which time he routinely abused her, both physically and emotionally, according to reporting by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker in May of 2018.

He says they almost never had sex without him beating her. He would slap her, choke her, spit on her. He demanded that she have scars removed. He called her his “brown slave.” He routinely drank more than a bottle of wine a night, and took sedatives. He forced her to drink with him. He threatened to tap her phone. He told her multiple times that if they broke up, he would kill her.

She suffered from hearing loss and vertigo and after the breakup, sought treatment. No specific cause of her conditions was determined by the doctor.

To explain how she stayed in such an abusive relationship for a year, she says, “Now I see how independent women get stuck in one. [The physical abuse] happens quickly. He’s drunk, and you’re naked and at your most vulnerable. It’s so disorienting. You lose a little of who you are.”

She calls Schneiderman a Jekyll and Hyde character, saying he champions women in public but abuses them in private.

She had no intention of coming forward until – through a network of mutual friends – she learned of another woman who had been abused by Schneiderman. That is the woman described as Anonymous Accuser #2 in the Mayer & Farrow New Yorker piece.

Click here to listen to a 5-minute interview of Barish with CBS This Morning’s Norah O’Donnell.

She explains that she didn’t think she had a #MeToo story, until she saw the black eye on Colbie Holderness, one of the two ex-wives of Trump’s Staff Secretary Rob Porter, and recognized herself in the story.

She also points out that Eric Schneiderman has $9 million remaining in his campaign fund. The National Organization for Women has demanded that he donate that money to organizations that support survivors and seek to end intimate partner abuse.

Barish was romantically involved with Schneiderman from the Summer of 2013 through New Year’s Day of 2015.

According to reporting by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow for The New Yorker, Schneiderman’s abuse began a month into their physical relationship, when the two were getting ready for bed one night after drinking. They were baiting each other, and he called her “a fucking whore.” Then he slapped her across the side of the head so hard her ears rang (her ear continued to bother her and she eventually discovered she had a perforated eardrum). He then pinned her down on the bed and began choking her.

She managed to get away from him, screaming that what he wasn’t doing wasn’t okay. She left, vowing to never see him again. She told several people about the attack in the immediate aftermath, including Salman Rushdie, who she used to date and has remained close friends with.

Despite her commitment to stay away from him, he wore her down. They resumed what would become an on and off again, physically and emotionally abusive relationship, that lasted for 2 years:

• He would often slap her (without consent) during sex.
• Although she was already trim, she lost another 30 pounds and became emaciated. Still, he would squeeze her leg and call it “chubby.”
• He would drink enormous quantities of wine and scotch almost every night, pushing her to do the same. He would literally hold a glass to her lips and force her to drink, sometimes causing it to dribble down her chin.
• He told her she wasn’t “a real single mother,” because she had childcare.
• He mocked her political activism, saying, “Go ahead, if it makes you feel better to do your little political things.”
• He told her, “If you ever left me, I’d kill you.”