Sarah Silverman Says Louis C.K. Masturbated in Front of Her

The latest woman to reveal that Louis C.K. masturbated inf front of her is the comedian's longtime friend Sarah Silverman, although the fellow comic says that she consented to the encounters. "Listen, I don't know if I'm going to regret saying this, but I've known Louis forever. I'm not making excuses for him -- please don't take this that way," Silverman told Howard Stern. "But, you know, we are peers, we are equals. When we were kids, and he used to ask if he could masturbate in front of me, sometimes I'd go, 'Fuck yeah I want to see that!'"

"It's not analogous to the other women that are talking about what he did to them, because he could offer me nothing. We were only just friends," explained Silverman. "So sometimes, yeah, I wanted to see it, it was amazing. Sometimes I'd be like, 'Fucking, gross, no,' and we'd get pizza. So I'm not saying what he did was okay, I'm just saying at a certain point, when he became influential -- not even famous -- but influential in the world of comedy, it changes. And he realized that. He realized it later -- but certainly before that New York Times -- and even in that New York Times article, they talk about how he went on and tried to connect with some of these women to say 'I fucked up and wronged you and want to make this right.'"

Silverman went on to say that C.K.'s crimes were wrong but not comparable to Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein or Donald Trump. "His pathology is permission-based -- I'm not saying that's okay because once he got famous, even just in the comedy community, that changes everything, and it makes it not okay -- including, as he said even, putting these women in a predicament. It took him a long time to realize that that was not okay," she said.

"I believe he has remorse, I believe he can come back, I just want him to talk about it onstage," she added. Rebecca Corry, one of the women who accused C.K. last year in the Times, responded to Silverman's comments on Twitter, saying that "CK had 'nothing to offer me' as I too was his equal on the set the day he decided to sexually harass me," prompting Silverman to apologize.