Former Fox News employee sues network, alleging Roger Ailes sexually abused her
Former Fox News employee Laura Luhn sued the network on Wednesday, alleging that late Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes sexually abused her for years.
A former Fox News employee sued the network Wednesday, alleging that the late Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes sexually abused her for years.
Laura Luhn, who worked at the network for almost 15 years, filed the suit in New York state court against Fox News, its former parent company, 21st Century Fox, and former network executive Bill Shine, accusing the network of “directly enabling” and “actively covering up” the abuse.
In the lawsuit, Luhn says Ailes, who died in 2017, “used his position as the head of Fox News to trap Laura W. Luhn in a decades-long cycle of sexual abuse.” Luhn alleges that the first instance of abuse took place in 1991 when she worked at his firm Ailes Communications and continued when she joined Fox News in 1996, calling it “repeated and habitual.”
“Ailes’s abuse of Luhn was among the worst he inflicted on his many victims,” the lawsuit says. “He physically forced Luhn to perform oral sex on him regularly. And he constantly reminded Luhn that he ‘owned’ her, that she was his ‘sex slave,’ and that she was forbidden from telling anyone about the abuse or he would make her pay dearly.”
Former Fox News Co-President Bill Shine joins White House staffJuly 5, 201802:24The suit alleges that Ailes photographed and videotaped Luhn “performing coerced sex acts” and in “compromising positions” and used the material as blackmail. Ailes allegedly made it clear that if she tried to speak out or stop the abuse, Luhn would experience “severe personal humiliation and career ruin,” according to the suit.
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