Radar Online is reporting that Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s new memoir, Settle For More, includes new accounts of sexual assault by former Fox News head Roger Ailes.
Ailes’ advances apparently began in 2005.
She writes that she was informed by her managing editor that she’d “captured the attention of Mr. Ailes” and she was summoned to the first of a series of meetings in his Manhattan office.
“Roger began pushing the limits,” she alleges. “There was a pattern to his behavior. I would be called into Roger’s office, he would shut the door, and over the next hour or two, he would engage in a kind of cat-and-mouse game with me — veering between obviously inappropriate sexually charged comments (e.g. about the ‘very sexy bras’ I must have and how he’d like to see me in them) and legitimate professional advice.”
He offered to advance her career “in exchange for sexual favors,” she writes, and even though she says she rejected “every single one,” she claims he tried “physical advances.” But in January 2006, she claims, he “crossed a new line — trying to grab me repeatedly and kiss me on the lips.” When she shoved him away, she alleges, “he asked me an ominous question: ‘When is your contract up?’ And then, for the third time, he tried to kiss me.”
According to Kelly’s publisher, the Ailes accounts were added at the last minute to her memoir.
I have several friends who work for Fox News. All were very disappointed in Ailes’ behavior, and said when they thought back over the years it didn’t really surprise them. However, my friends being all men, they didn’t have the same perspective on the sexual harassment as the women who came forward.
I’m told that the lawsuit by Gretchen Carlson was settled so quickly because she had been recording Ailes’ advances over the past year, and the recordings were going to be played in public if the case went to court.
