Don Francisco Talks Sexual Harassment, Says He Was Accused Fifteen Years Ago

After the outrage that currently exists in the United States and the rest of the world for all the accusations of sexual misconduct against woman, Mario Kreutzberger, better known as Don Francisco, opened up and shared the allegations he had to deny fifteen years ago.

"I’ve been accused of harassment and I can tell you that 15 years have passed since then and that was false. I participated in the Congress in the drafting of the law against harassment, because when they accused me there was no such law," Don Francisco explained to a Chilean newspaper. "I have been accused of several things and I can tell you, responsibly, that everyone did it for the use and abuse of my name to extort money from me." The Chilean television host and popular personality referred to the sexual harassment lawsuit interposed by one of his TV show former models, Ana Isabel Gómez. Gómez claimed that Don Francisco assaulted her in 1989 in a hotel.

The TV presenter gave as an example “the kiss on the cheek,” clarifying that culturally speaking for Latinos is something normal, however, in the United States and other parts of the world it can be considered harassment. "I believe that harassment is when you use your position to get sexual favors," he added.

A feature of Don Francisco during the years that was host of "Sábado Gigante," was his goofy stage persona. During the shows he used to try to steal a kiss from the beautiful models that were presented in the program, but he says, in his opinion it wasn’t misconduct. "It's hard to explain, because with this I don’t want to apologize. Neither do I want to say that some of those jokes of mine could ever be overstepped and I always apologize about that. I apologize right now, even when I have behaved beyond what corresponds to me, for example when interviewing someone, I later publicly apologized," clarified the giant of Hispanic television.

The child of German Jewish refugees will be celebrating his 77th birthday on December 28. He and "Sábado Gigante" have been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's longest-running program with the same host, and according to The New York Times, Don Francisco is a mix of Ed Sullivan, Regis Philbin, Art Linkletter, Bob Barker, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Donahue -- with a dash of Oprah Winfrey's civic-mindedness.