More Women Allege Ailes Sexually Harassed Them

Fox News host Gretchen Carlson may be the highest-profile woman to accuse Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, but she is not the first.

According to New York magazine, in recent days, more than a dozen women have contacted Carlson’s New Jersey-based attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, and made detailed allegations of sexual harassment by Ailes over a 25-year period dating back to the 1960s when he was a producer on The Mike Douglas Show.

“These are women who have never told these stories until now,” Smith told Gabriel Sherman at New York. “Some are in lot of pain.”

According to Sherman, their stories portray Ailes as a boss who spoke openly of expecting women to perform sexual favors in exchange for job opportunities. “He said that’s how all these men in media and politics work — everyone’s got their friend,” recalled Kellie Boyle, who says Ailes propositioned her in 1989, shortly after he helped George H.W. Bush become president, serving as his chief media strategist.

Six of the women agreed to speak with New York publicly for the first time. Two spoke on the record; the others requested anonymity for reasons that include shame and fear of retribution. “I didn’t tell my husband, it was so mortifying,” said Marsha Callahan, a former model who says Ailes harassed her in the late ‘60s, shortly before he became Richard Nixon’s media adviser.

Ailes is out of the the courts, according to Sherman  Late on Friday, his lawyers filed a motion in federal court in New Jersey seeking to move Carlson’s lawsuit to arbitration, which would prevent witnesses from being called in court. “Plaintiff’s ploy of filing in Superior Court to justify her shameless publicity campaign against Roger Ailes should not be countenanced,”

Roger Ailes

 Ailes’s lawyers argued. Carlson's lawyers responded in a statement: "Roger Ailes is trying to force this case into a secret arbitration proceeding...Gretchen never agreed to arbitrate anything with Mr. Ailes.”

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Politico reports the most egregious of the claims in Sherman's piece came from a former model using a pseudonym, who alleged that Ailes demanded oral sex from her when she was 16 years old and appearing on “The Mike Douglas Show,” which Ailes used to produce.

According to her account: “He proceeded to pull down his pants and very gingerly pull out his genitals and said, ‘Kiss them’ … I jumped up, but the door is locked and nobody’s out there. He chased me around the office and at some point it dawned on him that this just wasn’t going to happen. He finally pulled up his trousers. He was very angry and rushed over to his desk, pulled open a door and had a reel-to-reel tape recorder going. He said to me, ‘Don’t tell anybody about this. I’ve got it all on tape.’”

The woman was one of four who spoke to Sherman using pseudonyms to protect their identities. Kellie Boyle, a former Republican National Committee field adviser, and former model Marsha Callahan spoke with Sherman on the record.