In a series of stunning allegations, three women have accused scientist and celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson of sexual assault.

Freelance journalist David G. McAfee spoke to the women who made the accusations.

Dr. Katelyn N. Allers, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Bucknell University, told McAfee that Tyson felt her up at a party for the American Astronomical Society in 2009.

“Tyson was there, and he was dancing and drinking and all of that at the party, so a friend and I decided to get pictures with him,” she said.

They had taken two pictures together when the scientists decided to get personal with her, she alleged.

“After we had taken the picture, he noticed my tattoo and kind of grabbed me to look at it, and was really obsessed about whether I had Pluto on this tattoo or not… and then he looked for Pluto, and followed the tattoo into my dress,” she said.

She told McAfee that she felt the incident did not rise to the level of assault as it was done in public and, she said AAS did not have a way to report that behavior at the time.

She said if the incident occurred today she would have reported it.

Allers did tell Dr. Michele Thornley, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Bucknell in 2013 when Tyson was scheduled to speak there, McAfee confirmed.

“Yes, Katelyn spoke to me about her earlier incident–I don’t think we discussed exactly what year it happened, but I knew that it was a few years earlier than our conversations about the matter. Katelyn described the earlier incident to me in the fall of 2013, after she was invited to attend a dinner with Dr. Tyson when he was to be on campus in spring 2014 as a speaker in Bucknell’s “Tech/no” series,” she said.

“I had recently served on a university committee with one of the organizers of the series, so I arranged to meet with that person and indicated privately that Katelyn did not wish to attend the dinner, and spoke in general terms the reasons why. At that time, Katelyn expressed that she did not want to pursue the issue more publicly (e.g., broadly inform the organizing committee, or try to get the invitation to speak withdrawn), so I talked with the organizer privately about two things: (1) to be sure that Katelyn was no longer expected at dinner, and (2) some general recommendations to avoid having female students meeting with him in small groups without additional members of the community present,” she told McAfee.

Allers said “I think that he is someone that could use his position of fame and power in a way to try and take advantage.”

Another woman, Tyson’s former assistant Ashley Watson, said she had to quit her job due to Tyson’s inappropriate behavior.

McAfee reported what Watson described to him as Tyson pressuring her into a sexual situation.