Tag: sexual harassment

FBI to pay more than $22 million to 34 women who claimed sexual harassment at training academy

The FBI has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by paying more than $22 million to 34 female recruits alleging they were sexual harassed and dismissed from the agency’s Quantico, Virginia, training facility, according to news reports Monday.

They women allege having been routinely harassed by instructors with sexually charged comments about their breast size, false allegations of infidelity and the need to take contraception “to control their moods,” according to the Associated Press. 

The settlement is still subject to approval by a federal judge. But if the payout is approved, it would be among the largest lawsuit settlements in the history of the FBI, the wire service also reports.

“These problems are pervasive within the FBI and the attitudes that created them were learned at the academy,” said David J. Shaffer, the lawyer for the women. “This case will make important major changes in these attitudes.”

The suit was filed in 2019 and also contends the female recruits were judged more harshly than their male peers and “excessively targeted for correction and dismissal in tactical situations for perceived lack of judgment” and subjective “suitability” criteria.

The FBI did not immediately comment on the settlement. However, mny of the allegations in the lawsuit were confirmed in a 2022 internal watchdog report. 

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Pride Paraders Expose Themselves To Children, Say It’s ‘Okay’

While Pride is officially over, there is one unsettling detail that many have not discussed, as TENET Reporter Tayler Hansen found out while conducting interviews with LGBT members and advocates at a San Francisco “Pride” parade. Apparently, some attendees believe being nude in front of children is no big deal.

Throughout his interview, Hansen spoke with many individuals, including naked men, about whether it is appropriate for grown men and women to parade around naked in the presence of children.

“We’re born naked and so it’s okay for children to see people naked,” one man said.

Another man claimed that no one could explain the harm nudity causes to children.

One man, who decided to cover and then uncover himself, told Hansen that it was okay, as long as there was no “sexuality added to it.”

One man who was present with two others, admitted that he “just likes to be naked.”

“Teach your kids not to stare, it’s rude,” another man in the group told Hansen.

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How Jill Biden’s top adviser now ‘controls everything’ despite claims of sexual harassment, bullying and fixation with ‘size of male staffers’ endowments’

After Thursday’s disastrous CNN debate, President Joe Biden and the First Lady Jill tried to get ahead of the inevitable backlash, glossing over the debacle with a flurry of soft-ball publicity appearances.

A quick stop off at a debate viewing party held by ardent Biden-loyalists was followed by a midnight visit to an Atlanta Waffle House.

As the President – still looking stunned after his televised humiliation – greeted fellow diners who awkwardly remained seated, Jill swept up to the counter and giggled: ‘Order for Biden.’

But, for all her slick attempts to paper over the cracks, what happened next seemed highly revealing of her behind-the-scenes panic.

One of the reporters who had made their way into the Waffle House alongside TV crews asked the President how he thought he’d performed in the debate with Donald Trump.

‘I think we did well,’ Biden said, before straining a smile as he was hammered with follow-up questions about ‘concerns’ over his competency.

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Klaus Schwab Accused of Sexual Harassment at WEF

Klaus Schwab has been accused of sexual harassment and creating an “atmosphere hostile to women and black people” by multiple staff at the World Economic Forum.

A new investigation by The Wall Street Journal reveals a catalogue of accusations from dozens of members of WEF staff against the organization’s founder and executive chairman.

One woman told the Journal that Schwab repeatedly made suggestive comments to her and posed physically in front of her, presumably to impress her.

“There was a lot of pressure to be good-looking and wear tight dresses,” said another woman who worked at the WEF.

“Never in my career have I experienced looks being such an important topic as in the Forum.”

Schwab is accused of presiding over a workplace atmosphere that was “hostile to women and black people.”

“At least six female staffers were pushed out or otherwise saw their careers suffer when they were pregnant or returning from maternity leave,” the Journal reports.

“Another half dozen described sexual harassment they experienced at the hands of senior managers, some of whom remain at the Forum. Two said they were sexually harassed years ago by VIPs at Forum gatherings, including at Davos, where female staff were expected to be at the delegates’ beck and call. 

“In two more recent incidents, employees registered internal complaints after white Forum managers used the N-word around Black employees. Black employees also raised formal complaints to Forum leaders about being passed over for promotions or left out of Davos.”

The organization has denied all accusations of wrongdoing.

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CIA terminates whistleblower who prompted flood of sexual misconduct complaints

The CIA this week terminated a woman whose whistleblower account of being assaulted in a stairwell at the spy agency’s headquarters prompted a flood of colleagues to come forward with their own complaints of sexual misconduct. The woman’s attorney called the action a brazen retaliation.

While the CIA said that accusation was “factually inaccurate,” it wouldn’t comment further on the case and declined to explain why the 36-year-old did not make it through the agency’s clandestine officer training program known as “the Farm” and, unlike many of her classmates, was not hired into another job.

“To be clear, the CIA does not tolerate sexual assault, sexual harassment or whistleblower retaliation,” CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp told The Associated Press, adding the agency uses “consistent processes to ensure the fair and equal treatment of every officer going through training.”

The woman’s termination came less than six months after she filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the CIA retaliated against her for reporting what she said was a 2022 stairwell assault in Langley, Virginia, to law enforcement and testifying about it in a closed congressional hearing.

The lawsuit accused the agency of giving her harsher performance reviews and “slut shaming” her by improperly releasing her personal information during the state prosecution last year of Ashkan Bayatpour, a then-fellow CIA trainee convicted of assaulting her with a scarf.

The woman’s attorney, Kevin Carroll, told the AP that the CIA has now “unlawfully ended a young woman’s career only because she had the moral courage, lacking in her managers, to stand up and be a witness about her sexual assault.”

“The agency’s festering workplace sexual violence problem,” Carroll said, “is now harming the retention of young women who won’t put up with it any longer.”

The woman, who is not being identified because the AP does not generally identify victims of alleged sexual abuse, was credited with launching a reckoning, of sorts, at the CIA because hers was the rare allegation of sexual misconduct at the super-secret spy agency to make it into a public courtroom.

An AP investigation found the case helped embolden at least two-dozen women to come forward to authorities and Congress over the past two years with their own accounts at the CIA of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they contend is a campaign to keep them from speaking out.

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Creepy Colorado judge John Scipione is censured for telling clerk he was in ‘consensually non-monogamous’ relationship with shrink wife and that he liked to visit ‘ranch’ that ‘catered to his lifestyle’

A former Colorado judge has been publicly censured over inappropriate behavior that included boasting about his ‘non-monogamous’ lifestyle with his sex therapist wife and failing to disclose an extramarital affair.

John Scipione, a former 18th Judicial District Court judge, was suspended without pay in August 2022 .

The following January, the Colorado Supreme Court accepted his resignation after Scipione, 54, admitted to a year-long extramarital affair with a court clerk when he was a magistrate.

He was accused of using his position as a judicial officer ‘to seek intimate relationships with Judicial Department employees or court personnel’ on at least three occasions.

The inappropriate behavior emerged as part of a sexual harassment inquiry into Scipione.

He was publicly censured for the first time on November 19 this year.

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‘Betrayal’: How Biden Adviser Anita Dunn and SKDK Played Both Sides in Sexual Harassment Case

One of President Joe Biden’s most trusted advisers is under fire amid revelations that she helped guide former Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan (D.) through a sexual harassment scandal while her firm was working with a #MeToo advocacy group representing one of Madigan’s accusers.

Anita Dunn, who has been described as Biden’s “brawler-in-chief,” in 2018 and 2019 helped Madigan to respond to allegations that he retaliated against campaign staffer Alaina Hampton, who accused a top Madigan aide of sexual harassment. Hampton claimed she was blacklisted from working on other political campaigns after filing the complaint. Madigan’s campaign paid $200,000 to Dunn’s firm, SKDK, to respond to allegations from the lawsuit, according to NPR. At the same time, Madigan’s accuser was working with SKDK and a legal defense fund bankrolled by Time’s Up, an advocacy group for victims of sexual harassment.

It’s the latest example of Dunn, considered a feminist icon in Washington, quietly working for politically connected clients accused of sexual misconduct. In 2017, Dunn was revealed to have advised disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein after several actresses accused him of rape.

In addition to Dunn’s work for the Biden administration, her husband, Bob Bauer, is a personal attorney for the president. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“Betrayal” is how Hampton in an interview with NPR described Dunn’s actions.

“I don’t know Anita Dunn, and I hope I never will,” Hampton said. “But I would question her on her values and integrity, and I would ask her how she can credibly claim her commitment to women’s rights and issues.”

While it is unclear exactly what services Dunn provided Madigan, emails obtained by NPR indicate she provided advice for an op-ed that Madigan wrote in September 2018 for the Chicago Tribune. The then-speaker wrote that he should have “acted sooner” to address sexual harassment allegations at his office.

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CIA in Congress’ crosshairs over alleged mishandling of sex assault cases

The House intelligence committee is investigating whether the Central Intelligence Agency is mishandling how it responds to sexual assault and harassment in its workforce, according to four people familiar with the matter.

At least three female CIA employees have approached the committee since January to tell them that the agency is discouraging women from making sexual misconduct complaints, according to one of the people, attorney Kevin Carroll, who represents the first employee who talked to the committee. He also said the CIA is making it difficult for alleged victims to speak to law enforcement.

The allegations led committee chair Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and ranking member Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) to send a letter last week to CIA director Bill Burns to ask for the agency’s help looking into the issues, according to another of the four people, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private letter. Burns responded within 24 hours and pledged full cooperation, according to a senior CIA official.

Carroll said his client has told him that as many as 54 women at the CIA over the past decade have said they were been victims of sexual assault or misconduct by colleagues, and that their cases were improperly handled. POLITICO could not independently verify that assertion.

“This is the CIA’s Me Too moment,” said Carroll, who is a partner at the firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP and is representing the victim pro bono.

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Cop Caught on Own Body Cam Harassing Victim Before Turning it Off to Allegedly Rape Her

The now-disgraced officer Deangelo Reyes is a bad cop. Regardless of how his rape trial unfolds, thanks to the release of body camera footage this week, the world now knows that he is a lying sexual predator who uses his authority to intimidate, coerce, and allegedly rape unwitting victims.

The Tulsa Police Department released footage from Reyes’ body camera this week that showed an incident unfolding in April 2022, leading to rape charges against the officer. Reyes’ police union-appointed defense team is not happy about the video’s release as it needs no interpretation to paint their client in a sick and twisted light.

The incident began in April of last year when Reyes was responding to a call at a local motel. As Reyes was wrapping up the call, he spotted a woman walking her dog and decided to go into full creep mode.

As the officer’s body camera footage showed, Reyes pulls up next to the unsuspecting woman, who was a guest at the hotel and begins hitting on her from his patrol car. Just a couple of lines in, Reyes tells the woman, “You’re sexy. Is that unprofessional of me? I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

“Have you seen a lady in like a yellow hoodie running around here? Looked like she was upset?” Reyes is heard asking the woman. She responds, “No.”

You can hear Reyes ask the woman what her name is before he lies to her and gives her a fake name. “I’m Eric … Nice to meet you.”

Reyes then asks the woman where he can find her later, but she doesn’t tell him, and the encounter ends. Moments after they part ways, this predator cop turns off his body camera before jumping onto his department-issued computer to access information on the woman he just propositioned.

According to his arrest affidavit, Reyes found the hotel where the woman was staying and approached her. Since he had just accessed the woman’s record and noticed that she had prior convictions, he used this against her, threatening to put her back in prison.

According to police, Reyes then kissed her on the neck and based on his statement about putting her back in prison, she became terrified that he was going to plant evidence on her to fabricate an arrest.

The affidavit states that Reyes proceeded to rape the woman after getting her inside the hotel room. The woman submitted to a rape kit after the encounter, proving they had intercourse. Reyes now claims it was consensual.

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‘Set phone up so I can spy on you showering.’ Hunter Biden threatened to withhold cash-strapped assistant’s pay if she didn’t FaceTime him naked, texts show – as it’s revealed she’s the FOURTH employee with whom he had a sexual relationship

Hunter Biden threatened one of his cash-strapped young female staffers with withholding her pay if she didn’t FaceTime him for sex.

Shocking texts between the President’s son, 52, and his young assistant, who was 29 at the time, show Hunter asking for video sex sessions and sending her cash via Apple Pay after she pleaded that she was struggling to make rent.

The woman, who DailyMail.com has chosen not to identify, worked as an assistant at Hunter’s law firm, Owasco, in 2018 and 2019. She is the fourth employee he is known to have had a sexual relationship with.

Documents on his abandoned laptop show Hunter put his lover and brother’s widow Hallie Biden on his company payroll, as well as her sister Liz Secundy, with whom he also had an affair, texts reveal.

He also hired his daughter’s basketball coach, reportedly former stripper Lunden Roberts, but ended her employment and stopped responding to her messages after she told him she was pregnant with his child. Roberts eventually had to sue him for child support. 

Messages and emails involving his now 33-year-old assistant first appear on Hunter’s laptop in June 2018, when he flew her from Los Angeles to Washington DC.

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