Robert Scoble has spoken out about sexual harassment allegations leveled against him.
Niall Carson – PA Images
Tech evangelist Robert Scoble denied the sexual harassment allegations leveled at him by using a surprising defense: He never managed or held a position of power over the women who accused him.
“None of the women who came forward were ever in a position where I could make or break their careers,” Scoble said in a blog post Wednesday. Sexual harassment requires that I have such power.”
Scoble is the latest figure to be accused of sexual harassment. It’s a topic on the public’s mind following more than 50 accusations of sexual harassment leveled against Hollywood power player Harvey Weinstein and the revelation of a $32 million settlement former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly paid to a former network analyst who accused him of sexual harassment.
Scoble’s response comes after several women came forward last week with accounts of him making either racist remarks or unwanted sexual advances. Journalist Quinn Norton wrote in a Medium post that Scoble had groped her saying, “I felt one hand on my breast and his arm reaching around and grabbing my butt.”
Scoble did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the more than 2,400-word blog post, Scoble gives the own side of each incident, chalking up the allegations to everything from consensual flirting to a misinterpretation of events on the part of the accusers. He also accused one of the women of having blackmailed him after having an online affair.
While Scoble apologized in the post for not having been better to women in the past, via marital infidelities or watching adult videos online, he denied the allegations of harassment.
“Each of the women who have come forward used grains of truth to sell false narrative,” he said.
He also lambasted the media for not verifying all of the facts, noting that the claim that he said the allegations were “mostly true” to Shel Israel, his partner and co-founder of mixed-reality consulting firm Transformation Group, were inaccurate.
“As I said at the start of this post, there are grains of truth, and I told Shel that the statements were true enough that I would need to address them,” he said.
Scoble resigned on Monday from Transformation Group, which he co-founded earlier in the year.
First published Oct. 25 at 11:04 a.m. PT.
Updated at 11:47 a.m. PT: Adds background.