LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman issued his second statement in two days denying sexual misconduct allegations.
``I did not create unsafe work environments,'' Freeman said in the statement on Friday. ``I did not assault women. I did not offer employment or advancement in exchange for sex. Any suggestion that I did so is completely false.''
CNN reported Thursday that eight people accused Freeman of multiple cases of sexual harassment or inappropriate sexual comments on movie sets, during promotional activities and at his Los Angeles production company Revelations Entertainment.
One of Freeman's accusers is CNN reporter Chloe Melas, who says she interviewed Freeman when he was promoting the comedy ``Going in Style'' in 2017. Melas, who was six months pregnant, said she was subjected to suggestive comments by Freeman about how he wished he was there when she got pregnant.
A young production assistant who worked on that film's shoot in 2015 says she was subjected to unwanted touching and near-daily comments about her body. She also alleged that Freeman ``kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear.'' The woman says Freeman only stopped when co-star Alan Arkin told him to.
Four others who worked on movie sets with Freeman over the past 10 years told CNN he repeatedly made women feel uncomfortable at work.
``I admit that I am someone who feels a need to try to make women -- and men -- feel appreciated and at ease around me,'' Freeman said in Friday's statement. ``As a part of that, I would often try to joke with and compliment women, in what I thought was a light-hearted and humorous way.
``Clearly I was not always coming across the way I intended. And that is why I apologized Thursday and will continue to apologize to anyone I might have upset, however unintentionally.''
Freeman said he was ``devastated that 80 years of my life is at risk of being undermined, in the blink of an eye, by Thursday's media reports. ''
``All victims of assault and harassment deserve to be heard and we need to listen to them,'' Freeman said. ``But it is not right to equate horrific incidents of sexual assault with misplaced compliments or humor.''
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