The comedian has yet to address the latest allegations
+ READ ARTICLEFive women came forward publicly to accuse Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct in a new New York Times investigation.
The accusations, which date back as far as the late 1990s, come primarily from other working comedians. Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov claim that the comedian took out his penis and masturbated in front of them in 2002. Abby Schachner said she could hear him masturbating on the phone in 2003. Rebecca Corry alleged that he asked if he could masturbate in front of her in 2005, which she declined. A fifth woman, who remained anonymous, said he repeatedly asked her to watch him masturbate in the 90s.
A spokesperson for C.K. did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment on the allegations. That same spokesperson told the Times that the comedian would not answer questions and did not respond to the paper’s further inquiries.
HBO said Thursday that C.K. would no longer participate in its Night of Too Many Stars benefit on Nov. 18 and that the company is removing the comedian’s past projects from its on demand services, according to Times reporter Dave Itzkoff.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The Times‘ investigation, which was co-authored by Jodi Kantor, one of the reporters behind the paper’s bombshell report about the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, marks the first time that women have gone on the record with accusations about C.K. But there have long been whispers about the comedian’s alleged behavior, as the Times’ story notes.
In a 2016 interview with Vulture, C.K. addressed the rumors by saying: “That’s not real…There’s one more thing I want to say about this, and it’s important: If you need your public profile to be all positive, you’re sick in the head. I do the work I do, and what happens next I can’t look after. So my thing is that I try to speak to the work whenever I can. Just to the work and not to my life.”
Ahead of the publication of the Times‘ story, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that the screening for C.K.’s upcoming film I Love You, Daddy, which focuses on a relationship between a 17-year-old girl and a 68-year-old man, had been cancelled due to “unexpected circumstances.”
In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, several other prominent men have been accused of sexual harassment or misconduct. On Nov. 9 alone, several new allegations surfaced. Hotelier André Balazs was accused of groping by one woman, the New York Times reported. (He did not comment to the Times and did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.) The Washington Post reported allegations that U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore pursued relationships with underage girls, which Moore denied.