Woman who says O’Reilly called her ‘hot chocolate’ speaks out

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On Thursday, Perquita Burgess, the woman who claimed that Bill O’Reilly called her “hot chocolate,” appeared on The View and made her first public comments after the news broke that Bill O’Reilly had been fired from Fox News.

“It’s very cathartic; very cathartic,” Burgess said of the news that the Fox News host had been let go before going on to recount the kind of harassment she had experienced from the beleaguered former host.

“One day, he walked past my desk … and says, ‘Hey, hot chocolate.’ But he didn’t look at me when he said it, and I didn’t respond. I was mortified,” Burgess said. “Because not only was it sexual, I took that as a very plantational remark. I’ve been around enough racism … Such a blatant person with such a high profile making me feel uncomfortable but then not even acknowledging me.”

The alleged harassment went on for the week and a half that she was temping there.

“He always walked past my desk, and he made a grunting noise … when he made the noise, I thought maybe he had a muscle spasm,” she recalled. “But as time went on, I noticed every time he walked past my desk, if no one was around, he would make that noise. He wasn’t speaking to me; it wasn’t like he was saying hi … It was embarrassing. So I got to a point where I just did not look at him.”