Roger Ailes Sexually Harassed and 'Psychologically Tortured' a Fox News Booker for 20 Years
Laurie Luhn, a former booker and event planner at Fox News, came forward Friday with details of how Roger Ailes sexually harassed and "psychologically tortured" her for more than 20 years. Furthermore, not only were Fox News executives aware of her relationship with Ailes, they helped him cover it up, Luhn told Gabriel Sherman, who published her story in New York.
"He's a predator," Luhn told Sherman. She claimed that Ailes targeted her after realizing that she was vulnerable-in need of a job and scared as to how she would pay her bills.
She had met and been inspired by Ailes while working on George H.W. Bush's campaign, and asked him for a meeting. Over dinner, he questioned her about her life and her relationship with her parents. Then he asked for a ride to the airport.
"We pull up and I say, 'Thank you so much for dinner.' He leans over and slips me the tongue and kisses me," she said, "and hands me a wad of cash. 'Here's to help you pay some bills,' he said. It was maybe $200 or $300."
He later called her with a job offer as a consultant. Included in her retainer was a relationship with Ailes, requiring Luhn to be available to meet him when he was in D.C.
Thus began a years-long relationship where Ailes demanded sexual favors from Luhn and, in exchange, he gave her money, jobs, promotions and protection from being fired.
In 1991, Ailes demanded that Luhn meet him at the Crystal City Marriott, just outside Washington, and bring a black garter and stockings, which he caller her "uniform." Once inside his room, he made her put on the clothes and dance.
Luhn put on the black garter and stockings she said Ailes had instructed her to buy; he called it her uniform. Ailes sat on a couch. "Go over there. Dance for me," she recalled him saying. She hesitated. "Laurie, if you're gonna be my girl, my eyes and ears, if you are going to be someone I can depend on in Washington, my spy, come on, dance for me," he said, according to her account. When she started dancing, Ailes got out a video camera. Luhn didn't want to be filmed, she said, but Ailes was insistent: "I am gonna need you to do better than that." When she had finished dancing, Ailes told her to get down on her knees in front of him, she said, and put his hands on her temples. As she recalled, he began speaking to her slowly and authoritatively, as if he were some kind of Svengali: "Tell me you will do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. At any time, at any place when I call. No matter where I call you, no matter where you are. Do you understand? You will follow orders. If I tell you to put on your uniform, what are you gonna do, Laurie? WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO, LAURIE?" Then, she recalled, his voice dropped to a whisper: "What are you, Laurie? Are you Roger's whore? Are you Roger's spy? Come over here." Ailes asked her to perform oral sex, she said.
He left cash for her. This pattern would repeat for years.
Eventually, Ailes got Luhn a job at Fox News's Washington bureau as a booker, liaising with guests. When asked why she took the job, Luhn said that Ailes had psychological power over her. "I was programmed," she said.
The hotel meetings continued, with Luhn traveling to New York periodically, and Ailes began asking Luhn for phone sex in between visits.
In 2006, he stopped meeting her in hotels, instead insisting she send young, female employees alone into his office. "You're going to find me 'Roger's Angels.' You're going to find me whores," she remembered him telling her.
Luhn's mental health declined, and she began hallucinating, which is when she says Fox News executive Bill Shine and his deputy, Suzanne Scott, helped Ailes cover up the abuse (the reason she gives for her mental state) by putting her up in hotel rooms. Luhn eventually left Fox and signed a $3.15 million settlement, which included an ironclad nondisclosure agreement.
Luhn said she is breaking her silence now because, "The truth shall set you free. Nothing else matters."
[Source: New York]
