NEW YORK (AP) — Leaving little to the imagination, a Chicago-area woman on Monday accused Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of making a crude sexual advance more than a decade ago when she was seeking his help finding a job.

“Come clean,” Sharon Bialek challenged Cain at a news conference in New York at which she described herself as “a face and a voice” to support other accusers who have so far remained anonymous.

Cain’s campaign swiftly denied Bialek’s account. “All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are completely false,” it said in a written statement.

Even so, Bialek’s nationally broadcast appearance on cable television marked a new and — for Cain — dangerous turn in a controversy that he has struggled for more than a week to shed. An upstart in the presidential race, Cain shot to the top of public opinion polls in recent weeks and emerged, however temporarily, as the main conservative challenger to Mitt Romney.

Accompanied by her prominent lawyer, Gloria Allred, Bialek accused Cain of making a sexual advance one night in mid-July 1997, when she had travelled to Washington to have dinner with him in hopes he could help her find work.

She said the two had finished dinner and were in a car for what she thought was a ride to an office building.

“Instead of going into the offices he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt toward my genitals,” she said.