The woman who accused the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of sexual misconduct began speaking publicly this week, just before the official faces a vote over whether he will keep his job.

The prosecutor, Karim Khan, has denied the accusations, which surfaced internally at the court in May 2024 and led to an investigation. The allegations have also brought intense scrutiny on the court as it weighs high-profile cases involving Russia, Israel and the Gaza Strip, where Khan has sought arrest warrants for leaders.

Speaking to The New York Times on July 17, the woman said that she had decided to break her silence this week after seeing Khan make multiple press appearances in recent months.

“There are no good options,” she said. “For two years, I tried to resolve this through the proper institutional processes, no matter what I was going through, I was told that silence was dignity.” But she said that she had concluded that “staying quiet was not safety or protecting the process; it was participating in my own erasure.”

In interviews with investigators through the years and this week with CNN, she described how sexual attention from Khan escalated over time, starting after she began working for him as an assistant in 2023.

She spoke on condition of using only her first name, Sarah, and said abuses took place in an atmosphere of “coercive pressures” in which “no staff member could freely choose.” On July 17, Sarah, a lawyer from Malaysia, declined to describe...