#MeToo’ism and the age of sexual victimization.

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

A judge cited a teen’s ‘good family’ in declining to charge him as an adult for rape. Now, he’s resigned.

In 2016, a New Jersey judge asked a woman if she had attempted to close her legs to stop a sexual assault. Two years later, another Garden State judge said a 16-year-old boy accused of sexual assault should not be tried as an adult because he came from a “good family.”

When the comments came to light in recent months in judicial rulings, they sparked new national backlash over how the criminal justice system handles sexual assault cases.

Now, neither of the judges who made those statements will be sitting on the bench. New Jersey’s high court has announced that, in addition to new mandatory training for justices, the state has suspended the judge in the 2016 case, while the other judge has resigned.

The Supreme Court of New Jersey said Wednesday that Judge James Troiano of Monmouth County, N.J., had resigned following weeks of protest over his “good family” rationale in declining to try a teen boy accused of rape as an adult. State Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in a statement that Troiano’s resignation was “effective immediately.”

That same day, Rabner recommended that Superior Court Judge John Russo Jr. of Ocean County, N.J., be removed from the bench months after local media first reported on his comments to a sexual assault victim about closing her legs. Russo has been suspended without pay from his job, which pays him $181,000 annually, according to NJ.com.

“Sexual assault is an act of violence,” Rabner wrote. “It terrorizes, degrades, and induces fear in victims. Without question, it is a most serious matter in which fault lies solely with the perpetrator, not the victim. And our State has a strong interest in protecting victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.”

The chief justice added: “Every effort must be made not to revictimize a victim.”

The Supreme Court’s decisions were met with praise by state lawmakers, including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), who said the discipline would “uphold the reputation of our judiciary and ensure that all who seek justice are treated with dignity and respect.”

The New Jersey cases came to light as Americans have grappled with sexual assault cases where the young men are often seen to be favored over their female accusers. Other judges have also recently lost their gavels over such controversial decisions, as in Stanford swimmer Brock Turner’s six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

Russo, 57, was questioning a woman in 2016 who was seeking a restraining order for the father of her 5-year-old daughter — the man who had sexually assaulted her. According to a transcript from a court advisory panel that was released in this spring, Russo asked, “Do you know how to stop somebody from having intercourse with you?”

“Close your legs? Call the police?” Russo asked. “Did you do any of those things?”

Shortly afterward, Russo reportedly joked about the case with his staff. “What did you think of that? Did you hear the sex stuff?” he asked, according to the panel’s report.

In April, a panel recommended that Russo be suspended for three months, adding that his behavior showed “an emotional immaturity wholly unbefitting the judicial office and incompatible with the decorum expected of every jurist.” On Wednesday, the state also announced that it had started proceedings to remove Russo from the bench for good. The Associated Press reported that Russo has until next month to respond to the state Supreme Court’s order and contest the removal order.

“He has learned his lesson,” said attorney Amelia Carolla, according to the Asbury Park Press. “He will not do this again.”

In 2018, Troiano, 69, was called in from retirement to hear the case of an alleged rape at a pajama-themed party the previous year. Police said a 16-year-old boy, identified as G.M.C. by court documents, filmed himself assaulting a 16-year-old girl from behind. This came after the two teens, who prosecutors say were intoxicated, went off to a dark area, where a group of boys sprayed the girl with Febreze and hit her so hard she found hand marks the next day. According to court documents, G.M.C. allegedly sent a video of the girl, who had slurred speech and stumbled, with the caption: “When your first time having sex was rape.”

But Troiano dismissed those remarks as “just a 16-year-old kid saying stupid crap to his friends.” He then denied a waiver to try G.M.C. as an adult, citing the boy’s pedigree and potential.

“This young man comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school where he was doing extremely well,” Troiano said in his July 2018 decision. “He is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college. His scores for college entry were very high.”

In addition to expressing doubt about whether the boy showed any “calculation or cruelty on his part or sophistication or a predatory nature,” Troiano also suggested the girl’s allegation did not meet the standard of rape.

“There have been some, not many, but some cases of sexual assault involving juveniles which in my mind absolutely were the traditional case of rape,” the judge said, according to BuzzFeed News, “where there were generally two or more generally males involved, either at gunpoint or weapon, clearly manhandling a person into . . . an area where . . . there was nobody around, sometimes in an abandon[ed] house, sometimes in an abandon[ed] shed, shack, and just simply taking advantage of the person as well as beating the person, threatening the person.”

An appeals court overturned Troiano’s ruling in June. A court spokesman said that Troiano would keep his pension, which would be around $124,000, the New York Times reported.

The state Supreme Court’s disciplinary rulings came as critics have called for another New Jersey judge to leave the bench over her handling of a sexual assault case. In June, an appeals court rebuked Superior Court Judge Marcia Silva who ruled this year that a 16-year-old boy’s alleged sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl was not considered “an especially heinous or cruel offense” and that he should not be tried as an adult.

“The victim did not suffer any physical or emotional injuries as a result, other than the ramifications of losing her virginity, which the court does not find to be especially serious harm in this case,” the Middlesex County judge said, according to NJ.com.

Although at least 14 members of the state Assembly have called for the 44-year-old’s removal, no action has been made against Silva, NJ.com reported. Murphy, the state’s governor, urged caution in moving too quickly to remove judges linked to insensitive comments and procedure on sexual assault cases.

“There’s a process,” he said on Wednesday to WBGO.

#Resist

[_priapism]

A judge cited a teen’s ‘good family’ in declining to charge him as an adult for rape. Now, he’s resigned.

#Resist

Yet Brett Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court.   

[Athos_131]

What do ‘Lock her up’ and ‘Send her back’ have in common? It’s pretty obvious.

Send her back.

For the past three days, the phrase has been repeated so much on the news that it can sound divorced of meaning. We could be talking about an irate customer who has demanded to be escorted to a manager; we could be talking about a poorly cooked lobster. Send her back, bring more clarified butter while I wait .

It’s so plausibly innocuous — there’s not a naughty word in the bunch — which is what ultimately makes it so cunning. You can utter the sentence without sounding like you’re directly slandering someone and yet, in doing so, slander many people.

What made “Send her back” such a horrifying chant was not how specific it was but how generic. It was not only that it targeted a sitting member of Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is an American citizen. It was that, at President Trump’s rally this week, we saw the dramatic unveiling of a castigation that could now be used against any woman not behaving as she should.

Send who? Send her.

“Send her back” is the granddaughter of “Lock her up,” the chant that populated Trump rallies in 2016 and beyond. For awhile, that phrase also seemed specific and personal, uniquely designed for Hillary Clinton, who, as had been recently revealed, ill-advisedly used a private server for official government business.

In that context, “Lock her up” seemed to be about that woman and that incident, at that moment in time.

But then the chant resurfaced, and it wasn’t in reference to Clinton. It was in reference to Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of assaulting her when they were teenagers. From another rally podium, the president mocked her testimony and reprimanded her for leaving Kavanaugh’s life in “tatters.” “Lock her up,” the crowd chanted in response.

At another rally a week later, the chant morphed into an attack on Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), whom the president accused of leaking documents to the media. “That’s another beauty,” the president sardonically said of Feinstein, and his fans called back, “Lock her up!”

Lock up who? Lock up her.

The “her” had become fungible. Any woman could become a woman who should be locked up; it required only running afoul of what Trump thought she should be doing.

“It’s meant as a deterrent to all women,” said Linda Hirshman, author of “Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment,” when I asked how she thought these slogans worked. “You’re intended to feel vulnerable and be deterred from the...behavior of disagreeing with him.”

I took the same question to a cognitive linguist/philosopher, George Lakoff. “ ‘Send her back’ has the same grammatical structure as ‘Lock her up,’ and the same sound structure — it’s very straightforward,” he said. “And it has virtually the same meaning.”

Lakoff said there was significance in the fact that both chants dispensed with names in favor of pronouns. The pronouns make these women into “not a person,” he said. “She’s this thing that’s out there that should not be paid attention to — that should be gotten rid of.”

On Thursday, the president said he had been unhappy with the chant — though if he’d truly disapproved, it would have been easy to correct on the spot, as Sen. John McCain did when one of his supporters referred to Barack Obama as “an Arab” at a town hall. Instead, Trump “paused to savor it for several seconds before continuing his speech,” noted Jennifer Sclafani, a linguist who studies political discourse and gender. “He even thrice nodded his head back and forth in time with the chant, as if to prod the audience on.”

And, of course, the wording of the chant was cribbed from one of the president’s tweets: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he’d written.

“They” weren’t named in the tweet, just as they weren’t named in the chants. He had shorthanded his targets as “ ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen,” leaving followers to determine that he was likely referring to four women known colloquially as “the Squad” — a whole bunch of hers who had made it their business to criticize him. It’s worth noting, as many have, that these were all women of color and that the chant reserved for Omar was even more antagonistic than the one used for Hillary Clinton. “Lock her up” implies she should be prosecuted under the American legal system; “Send her back” implies she’s not even deserving of due process, that she doesn’t belong here anyway.

On the same day that an arena full of North Carolinians were screaming, “Send her back!” video footage surfaced of the president attending a 1992 party with Jeffrey Epstein, surrounded by cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills. He laughed, he danced, he flirted with clusters of partying blondes.

At first blush, the two events seemed like opposite ends of the spectrum. Here was the president on stage, basking in the hatred flung toward one group of women. Here was the president on the dance floor, bestowing affection on another.

At one point in the short clip, he posed for a photograph with a cluster of women and then patted one of them on the butt with the same absentmindedness one might use on the rump of a dairy cow before sending her along.

It was a quick pat, barely notable. But it’s what I was thinking of, a few hours later, while watching footage of the rally. The pat had the same kind of dehumanization as did the chants about Ilhan Omar or Hillary Clinton or Christine Blasey Ford. The “good” women, in his book, are rewarded with pats, like pets. The bad ones are punished with prison or deportation, like criminals.

We could think of exceptions to this brutal dichotomy, of course. His daughter Ivanka, or Kellyanne Conway, or Nikki Haley, or Jeanine Pirro, the reality TV judge who has joined the president in maligning Omar. But, in general, his relationships with women are three-syllable ones, easily distilled into chants.

Send her back.

Lock her up.

Pat her butt.

They’re all part of the same world, where women are either cheerleaders to grab or insolent shrews to be put in their place. What they don’t often seem to be, in his mind, is real people.

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

What do ‘Lock her up’ and ‘Send her back’ have in common? It’s pretty obvious.

Yeah, he's an equal opportunity asshole, just as long as he enjoys every opportunity.  Women, non-Europeans, and LGBTQ people all must be stopped.  So, his fanbase chants the same hate-speech, it's not just against women, it's against women in positions of Power, speaking openly about the problems with our country. 

"Lock Her Up" was about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"Send her back" was about a Legislator, speaking out in the legislature, literally the job she was Elected to do.

In a word, what they have in common is Hegemony.  That's the threat, to white male oligarchs, and their constituents. 

[Athos_131]

Twitch Streamer PaladinAmber Does Not Have Time For Your Shit, Internet Creeps

Make creepy comments in PaladinAmber’s Twitch chat at your own risk. “How much for a hug?” somebody asked during a stream a few days ago. In the blink of an eye, PaladinAmber switched over to an infomercial-style overlay, complete with a (fake) phone number and a list of payment options.

“You wanna know how much it’s gonna be for a hug?” she asked. “That’s right, you guessed it: It’s gonna be nineteen-ninety fuck off.”

In the past couple weeks, PaladinAmber has risen to a place of viral celebrity with these sorts of clips. Usually, it goes something like this: A viewer says one of approximately eight million inappropriate things women on the internet hear on a daily basis, and PaladinAmber roasts them until there’s nothing left but sinew and bone. She does this with an elaborate camera setup, creative overlays, and improvisational humor, generally drawing on tropes from news broadcasts and infomercials. For example, a question about whether she was straight or bi—and, of course, if she was single—led to a faux “breaking news” bit that now has nearly 3 million views.

From her news-channel overlay, she laid into that viewer, and anyone who might have been thinking the same thing, all while seamlessly swapping between camera angles for comedic effect.

“I am a female on the internet, but I don’t want to date any of you,” she said. “This just in: It is possible for people to be on the internet and not want to do the horizontal tango with one another, or with any of you guys. So I’m going to announce that it’s none of your fucking business. It doesn’t matter. I’m a gal being a pal on the internet, and if you like my content, you can hang out. You can even subscribe. You can even just not do that and hang out and watch. That’s cool too. Don’t ask me about about my sexual preferences or dating.”

“Back to you guys!” she said, wrapping up the bit and swapping back to her regular stream view.

PaladinAmber has done numerous similar live segments, addressing everything from requests for her to “sHoW bOoBs pLz” to more out-there demands like foot play and saliva in a cup. This is how she copes with life on a platform where over 80 percent of users are male, and many of them feel like they can say whatever they want to women without facing repercussions. She’s turned their awkward, grating, and sometimes aggressive comments into fodder for elaborate jokes. She is, however, dead serious about the message at the heart of her comedic tirades. She wants people to cut this shit out, and she hopes that her clips inspire other streamers to call out toxic viewers instead of letting them fly under the radar, a status quo that buzzes like flies on garbage.

“This is what content creators should be calling out, and this is what content creators shouldn’t be allowing, and this is how you could go about it if you wanted to tackle the issue that we all face every day when we go live,” PaladinAmber told Kotaku during an interview over Discord yesterday.

PaladinAmber is 23 and a resident of Australia. Besides loving games, she’s also a fan of sci-fi who plans to write and self-publish her own novel with support from the growing community of 30,000 people who follow her on Twitch and nearly 70,000 who follow her on Twitter. She started streaming games all of eight months ago, with nothing but a PlayStation 4 and a “bootleg” setup. It wasn’t long before her humble stream attracted its share of leering dudes. She began receiving creepy DMs on Instagram and the PlayStation Network, so she decided to shine an uncomfortably bright spotlight on the people sending them.

First, it was just basic on-stream call outs. “We’d name them and shame them and say, ‘This is the nasty boy of the week’—that kind of thing,” she said.

The news cast and infomercial angle, she said, got thrown into the pot “purely by accident.” She decided to take Twitch seriously after testing the waters on PlayStation, upgrading to a PC-based setup with three cameras that she switches between on the fly using an Elgato stream deck. Humor had always been a part of her stream, and she had made overlays for other skits and intermissions that she’d deploy between play sessions of games like Rainbow Six Siege. They were never intended to aid in sending weird viewers back to their sewers, but then the stars—if you could call them that—aligned.

“I was trying to do the news one day as a joke, and somebody just happened to say something that was so far-fetched that I couldn’t not make it a headline,” PaladinAmber said. “And then that was it. Everyone was like ‘This is what the news is for. This is the news channel I stand by.’ I was like ‘That’s it. I’ve become the news lady.’”

She’s drawn to these kinds of commercial-like formats because they’re nostalgic vessels for comedic timing. This particular style of humor, she believes, is what sets her channel apart on Twitch, where high-level players rule the roost.

“It kind of gives this really bad 1:00 a.m. TV feel to my channel, which is what I was after, because I don’t want it to be taken seriously because I’m not an esports gamer,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve never been great at video games. I love playing video games, but truth be told, I suck. It’s one of those things where I can’t make a career in esports, but I definitely can put forward some of my really terribly well done ideas and use those to bring that real hearty laugh to people, which is what I was after.”

She does hope that people are getting the message, though, because as is, she doesn’t think Twitch’s culture or suite of moderation tools is doing enough to deter nasty, harassing behavior. Even if a viewer gets banned from one channel, they can keep watching a streamer and see who’s in their chat (and even DM those people), they can make a new account and hop back into their chat, or they can join the chat of another channel and pick up right where they left off.

“I think the main reason Twitch is extremely oversaturated with really disgusting viewers is that, a lot of the time, a simple ban does absolutely nothing to move them on in that respect to a different platform,” she said.

PaladinAmber said that she appreciates the tools that are there, but that ultimately, she feels the culture needs to shift. More streamers, she believes, need to be vocal about over-the-line comments from viewers instead of just letting them fly by in chat.

“If you’ve ever done something stupid, and somebody said to you, ‘Hey, that was really stupid,’ it truly makes you question,” she said. “And whether or not they questioned it right there and then, eventually if enough people start saying, ‘Hey, this behavior is really stupid; you should probably consider changing that or just logging off,’ it starts to sit there with that person, and then hopefully that change comes.”

PaladinAmber has witnessed that change first-hand in her own community.

“I had one viewer who I called out in the very beginning, and he was ban-evading,” she said. “We made it this thing on my channel where it was like a myth. There was lore behind it. And he messaged me a couple of months ago and actually said, ‘I’m so sorry for all of the distress that I caused you. I realize now how bad my actions truly were. I do apologize. I’m no longer on Twitch. I’ve had an IP ban’—all of this sort of stuff, but really owning up to his actions. And so I thought, if one out of 10 people really learn that lesson of ‘It’s the internet, but also your actions have repercussions,’ then my job is done as a comedic entertainer.”

She thinks humor makes the medicine go down easier, inviting people to participate in her stream and her community in more productive ways instead of just giving them the boot for their ugly behavior.

“It’s about softening the blow, not making somebody feel extremely targeted and called out in a negative fashion,” she said. “Because when has negative reinforcement ever worked for anyone? It’s traumatic, it’s unpleasant, and it’s probably going to aggravate the situation…”

“I have a set of things [like racism and sexism] that will not be acknowledged at all and will just be sort of dealt with immediately,” she said. “But then everything else is kind of like, ‘Listen, I hear you, but also you need to stop this if you want to hang out here because this is a really cool place to hang out.’”

Over the past couple weeks, however, PaladinAmber has found herself in an odd spot. On one hand, her segments calling out skeevy viewers are reaching more people than ever, but on the other, people are now feeling emboldened to come into her chat and say the weirdest, grossest stuff they can think of in the hopes that she’ll roast them and that they’ll go viral. PaladinAmber acknowledged that, after a certain point, her approach could become counterproductive. But at the same time, she thinks that, in her own chat, things have improved in some ways.

“I think there’s less of the really bad sort of derogatory behavior that used to come in and more of the ‘Hey, show me your feet’ kind of comedic behavior that’s happening,” she said. “I don’t want the ‘Hey, are you single? Hey baby, date me. What would you do for $1,000?’ stuff, which is such a common occurrence for streamers who aren’t viral or content creators who haven’t yet done anything about it. Yes, it’s counterproductive, but I do think that it’s still going to change the way that a lot of other content creators handle this stuff, which will then sort of start to eradicate the issue in Twitch chat.”

She recognizes, though, that streaming is a deceptively tough job, and not everybody has the mental or emotional bandwidth to add callouts that might incite hate to their schedule of being “on” for much of their day, interacting with chat, managing staffs of moderators, and dealing with the hate that already comes their way as a woman on Twitch. She still encourages people to try speaking up, though, and to seek support in the form of therapy and things of the like, which she views as “absolutely wonderful” tools for streamers to have.

“If somebody is kind of suffering in silence because they don’t have the ability to say these things, and that’s all their chat is saturated with, I would 100 percent say that the sooner you start to call it out and set your boundaries, the easier it is for you as a person to stand back and say, ‘No, I’m not going to accept this sort of interaction with you because I don’t agree with it. And I think what you’ve done is shitty,’” she said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

A Navy SEAL Platoon Is Pulled From Iraq Over Misconduct Reports

An entire platoon of Navy SEAL commandos was abruptly removed from Iraq this week after commanders heard reports of serious misconduct and a breakdown of discipline in the elite unit.

Officials did not release any details. But a senior Navy official with knowledge of the matter said the Navy is investigating reports that the unit, Foxtrot Platoon of SEAL Team 7, held a Fourth of July party where some members consumed alcohol against regulations, and that a senior enlisted member of the platoon had raped a female service member attached to the platoon.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about a continuing investigation.

Jeremiah Sullivan, a civilian attorney representing one of the SEALs in the platoon, confirmed that there was an investigation into reports of sexual assault and unauthorized drinking.

When commanders began investigating the allegations, the entire platoon invoked their right to remain silent, according to a United States official briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. At that point, the official said, commanders decided to send the whole platoon home, including the lieutenant in command.

The commander of American special operations troops in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Eric Hill of the Air Force, ordered the extremely rare removal of the platoon — the only group of SEALs in Iraq — “due to a perceived deterioration of good order and discipline within the team during nonoperational periods,” according to a statement from Special Operations Command.

“There were allegations of wrongdoing, and the commander initiated an investigation, which is still ongoing,” said Ken McGraw, a spokesman for Special Operations Command. “After the investigation began, the commander lost confidence in the platoon’s ability to accomplish the mission and ordered the platoon’s redeployment.”

The Navy ordered the SEALs to take drug tests, according to a Navy SEAL officer who has been briefed on the matter. The results of those tests are not yet known, the officer said.

Lt. Gen. Paul LaCamera, the top American commander in Iraq and Syria, would not comment on the episode, citing the ongoing investigation. But he said on Friday that the American military in Iraq would “make the adjustment we need to keep the mission going” following the SEAL team’s departure from the country.

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Foxtrot Platoon — including 19 SEALs and four support troops — was in Kuwait on Thursday, en route to Seal Team 7’s base at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego. The unit was not immediately replaced in Iraq, increasing the burdens on other American troops there, but the Navy said in a statement that “the loss of confidence in this case outweighed potential operational risk” from their absence.

Enlisted Navy SEALs at Coronado said that while individuals are occasionally removed from missions for misconduct, they could not recall another instance of an entire SEAL platoon being sent home. Last year, a Green Beret detachment from the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group was withdrawn from Afghanistan after members of the unit were implicated in the abuse of an Afghan prisoner.

The withdrawal of Foxtrot Platoon is the latest in a series of black eyes for the SEAL teams, which have been hit repeatedly over the last year by reports of drug use, misconduct and violence.

Two SEALs and two Marines were charged in the death of a Green Beret who was strangled in 2017 during a hazing incident while the commandos were on a secret deployment in Mali in West Africa. One of the SEALs pleaded guilty and was sentenced in May.

Earlier this week, Navy Times reported that cocaine use was widespread among members of SEAL Team 10, based in Virginia, and that SEALs in the team considered the Navy’s drug testing efforts “a joke.”

Accounts of broad drug use among senior enlisted SEALs emerged in the court-martial of Special Operator First Class Edward Gallagher. He was acquitted earlier this month of charges that he had shot unarmed civilians and stabbed a wounded captive to death while leading a platoon in Iraq in 2017, but he was convicted of posing for photographs with the teenage captive’s corpse.

During the trial, SEALs from his platoon testified that they had constructed a rooftop bar at their safe house in Iraq, and that officers in charge of enforcing regulations drank there with enlisted men, and even took turns acting as disc jockeys.

Bradley Strawser, who teaches ethics in war at the Naval Postgraduate School, said the reports of rogue behavior in the SEALs are partly a product of nearly 20 years of constant special-operations warfare.

“This kind of slide in the ethical culture, standards, ethos and expectations we have been seeing across the service now for several years is yet another cost of this kind of endless war-fighting,” he said. “Our military desperately needs time to circle the wagons, go deep in working out some of the systemic problems, and effectively right the ship. But it’s very hard to do that when we are literally at never-ending war.”

Military regulations forbid the consumption of alcohol in Iraq and Afghanistan, two predominantly Muslim countries. But its presence among American troops serving there is hardly rare, and in many units, including the SEAL teams, leaders sometimes turn a blind eye to moderate use.

But this year, in response to repeated reports of misconduct, the commander of Navy Special Warfare, Rear Adm. Collin Green, took steps to clean up SEAL culture with a focus on accountability, character, and what he called “ethical compliance.”

When Admiral Green heard of the allegations about Foxtrot Platoon, he pushed for the unit to be withdrawn from Iraq, according to two Navy officials with knowledge of the event.

A spokeswoman for the SEALs, Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, said that in general top commanders are increasingly focused on enforcing discipline.

“Naval Special Warfare insists on a culture where ethical adherence is equally important to tactical proficiency,” she said in a statement. “Good order and discipline is critical to the mission. We’re actively reinforcing, with the entire force, basic leadership, readiness, responsibility and ethical principles that must form the foundation of special operations.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

‘I Have a Moral Responsibility to Come Forward’: Colonel Accuses Top Military Nominee of Assault

Col. Kathryn A. Spletstoser of the Army says she had returned to her hotel room and was putting on face cream on the night of Dec. 2, 2017, after a full day at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, when her boss, Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, the commander of United States Strategic Command, knocked on her door and said he wanted to talk to her.

The military’s itinerary of General Hyten’s movements that day in Simi Valley, which was viewed by The New York Times, said he was having “executive time.” Colonel Spletstoser said in an interview this week that her boss “sat on the bed in front of the TV and asked me to sit down next to him.”

According to her account, General Hyten reached for her hand. She became alarmed, and stood back up. He stood up too, she said, and pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips while pressing himself against her, then ejaculated, getting semen on his sweatpants and on her yoga pants.

In April, President Trump nominated General Hyten to be the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If confirmed, he would become the country’s No. 2 military officer, helping to oversee the 1.2 million active-duty American troops at home and deployed around the world.

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General Hyten denies Colonel Spletstoser’s allegations of being inappropriately touched several times in 2017, and an Air Force official charged with investigating her complaint declined in June to refer General Hyten to a court-martial.

A Defense Department official who on Friday discussed the investigation only on condition of anonymity maintained that the Air Force’s investigation into the allegations did not unearth any emails, text messages or other supporting evidence, except for the fact that the two were together at each time that she alleges abusive sexual contact took place.

The official said that General Hyten, who oversees the country’s nuclear arsenal as the head of the Strategic Command, is one of the most heavily guarded officers in the American military and is frequently escorted by a security detail.

The official said it would be difficult, though not impossible, for the general to have entered Colonel Spletstoser’s room without his security guards noticing. None of the guards, the official said, reported anything amiss.

Earlier this week, both the general, who is 60, and his accuser, 51, privately testified before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is considering General Hyten’s nomination.

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“This is a very serious matter, the accusations are very serious,” Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, told reporters after General Hyten’s testimony on Thursday. “We’re taking this step by step and being as thorough as we can on both sides of the aisle.”

Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and chairman of the committee, said he planned to go ahead with hearings on General Hyten’s nomination.

But the case is, once again, highlighting an issue that has plagued the military as it struggles to address sexual assault complaints within its ranks.

The military’s initial investigation into Colonel Spletstoser’s charge was handled by Gen. James M. “Mike” Holmes, the chief of Air Combat Command, who technically is junior to General Hyten.

“The severity of the allegations and the sensitivity and seniority of General Hyten’s billet demand that a senior officeholder — not a peer, and certainly not a peer who is junior in grade to General Hyten — should be the convening authority,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Ms. Duckworth wrote in a June 25 letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

The Pentagon has taken pains to praise General Hyten.

Col. DeDe Halfhill, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said that “with more than 38 years of service to our nation, Gen. Hyten has proven himself to be a principled and dedicated patriot.”

Colonel Halfhill said Air Force investigators interviewed 53 witnesses and reviewed thousands of emails and relevant documents after Colonel Spletstoser reported her accusations against General Hyden.

“After meeting with the alleged victim in person, the designated general court-martial convening authority determined there was insufficient evidence to support any finding of misconduct against General Hyten,” Colonel Halfhill said in a statement Friday evening.

The case has drawn the ire of sexual assault victims advocates, who note that the Pentagon has not issued a similar official lauding of Colonel Spletstoser, the alleged victim, despite her own 28 years in the Army, including two combat tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. She remains on active duty in the military.

Col. Don Christensen, who retired from the Air Force and is president of Protect Our Defenders, which advocates on behalf of assault victims, said even after years of public criticism over how the Defense Department handles sex assault cases, the Hyten case shows that the agency still has not gotten it right.

He pointed to the case of Senator Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona, as an example.

Earlier this year, Ms. McSally announced that she was raped while she was a cadet at the Air Force Academy 30 years ago. She did not disclose who raped her, but said that the Defense Department’s handling of her case made her feel as if she were being raped again.

Still, Ms. McSally said she believed the prosecution of such cases should remain within the purview of the Defense Department, a position the Pentagon takes as well.

“It just hit me the differences in the way the military addressed Senator McSally’s disclosure and the way they are dealing with Hyten’s victim,” Colonel Christensen said in an interview. “McSally disclosed she was raped by an unnamed superior officer at an undisclosed time and undisclosed location 20 years after she was raped. McSally received an official apology from the Air Force.”

Colonel Spletstoser, by contrast, told the Pentagon “who it was, when it occurred and where it occurred,” Colonel Christensen said. “She cooperated fully with the investigation and agreed to testify” before the Senate committee.

“She has received no apology,” Colonel Christensen said. “Instead, the Pentagon praised the man she says sexually assaulted her.” He added: “If this were Staff Sgt. Hyten, he’d be getting charged. The only reason he wasn’t charged is because he’s General Hyten.”

In April, after Colonel Spletstoser reported the confrontation in her hotel room, the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations opened an inquiry into whether General Hyten had committed abusive sexual contact. Its review, parts of which were viewed by The Times, includes a redacted interview with General Hyten’s wife, Laura Hyten, in which she says her husband took a lie-detector test administered by a private company and was upset afterward because “it did not go well.”

The report says that Mrs. Hyten later “clarified she did not mean that the polygraph did not go well but rather she understood that the results were inconclusive.” General Hyten declined to take a lie-detector test for the Defense Department’s investigation, two Defense officials said. Colonel Spletstoser said that she was not asked to take one.

At the Strategic Command, based in Omaha, Neb., Colonel Spletstoser has a reputation for being hard-hitting and assertive, traits that she freely acknowledges. An administrative inquiry in 2018 includes statements from her colleagues at Strategic Command that she was “toxic” in her dealings with both subordinates and superiors.

“Col. S. says things in meetings that could be perceived as disrespectful to senior officers and civilians,” the administrative inquiry quoted a rear admiral as saying. “I have not seen Gen. Hyten correct her bluntness nor interruptions to seniors.”

In fact, General Hyten was hugely complimentary of her in performance reviews she provided to The Times, including one that was dated Nov. 14, 2017 — just weeks before the alleged incident in Simi Valley, but after what she said were other unwanted sexual encounters that he initiated.

That review, in which General Hyten was listed as the senior rater, described Colonel Spletstoser as an “exceptionally competent and committed leader with the highest level of character,” and adding that “her ethics are above reproach.”

In her interview this week, the first time that she has agreed to be publicly identified in the case, Colonel Spletstoser said that she had gone back to her colleagues after seeing their comments and “tried to apologize to people for how I behaved.”

But none of that takes away, she said, from what she says her boss did to her over the course of 2017.

On several occasions, she said, General Hyten tried to kiss her, hug her and touch her inappropriately while in her office or on trips. She said she told him no, and even threatened to tell his wife, and that he was often apologetic and emotional afterward.

The unwanted touching continued, she said, escalating to the alleged Simi Valley assault in December 2017.

The festive two-day port of call passes for the glitterati of the military policy wonk world. American lawmakers and former cabinet officials receive “peace through strength” awards, while panel discussions on the Islamic State, combating Russia and China, and how to engage with Silicon Valley unfold on the stage, before participants head to the hotel bars.

Colonel Spletstoser said she was appalled after General Hyten ejaculated while pressing up against her, and she went into her hotel bathroom and threw a towel at him, telling him to clean himself up.

He went into the bathroom and stayed there for several minutes, she said. When he came out, he was again apologetic, and asked her if she would report him.

“I was distraught,” she said. But “who was I going to report it to? Secretary Mattis? Really? All I was trying to do was just survive and not have my life ruined.”

Colonel Spletstoser said that she had believed that General Hyten would retire, and had planned to say nothing about the incident.

When he was nominated to the second highest military job in the country, she said, “I realized I have a moral responsibility to come forward. I could not live with myself if this happens to someone else and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

Knowing how Trump reacts to sexual assault, he'll probably try to make him SecDef.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Twitch Streamers Plan ‘SlutStream’ To Raise Awareness Of Online Harassment

Tomorrow, a veteran Twitch streamer is organizing a day called “SlutStream” for women gaming online to band together and deflate the power of the word “slut.”

For over a decade, the word “slut” has been under siege. At annual SlutWalks, thousands march in “sexy” attire to protest the idea that women’s clothing or lifestyles could in any way invite sexual violence. In high schools, teenagers are battling the notion that young women who violate dress codes are distractions or unfit for education. Now, Twitch streamers are launching their own effort to highlight how the word “slut,” or slut-shaming generally, can make it hard to live and work online.

“I’ve had a lot of people ask, ‘Why call it SlutStream? That’s just offensive,’” said Kacey “Kaceytron” Kaviness, a longtime Twitch streamer with 500,000 followers. “The whole idea of calling it ‘SlutStream’ is taking the name back and giving less power to it.”

Kaviness, who has mockingly referred to herself as a “titty streamer,” made a name for herself on Twitch around 2013 trolling and mocking Twitch culture. “People who are upset about female streamers wearing low-cut tops will see [my stream] and say, ‘Oh, yeah, she’s making fun of female streamers acting like sluts for views,’” Kaviness told Kotaku for a 2018 profile. “The way I see it is, it’s making fun of the people who get upset about that.” Eliciting fury and vitriol from self-serious gamers, Kaviness has for years satirized the widespread stereotype that women on Twitch are leveraging their goods for clicks.

Tomorrow, Kaviness and fellow streamer Isabella “IzzyBear” O’Hammon are leading a cadre of Twitch streamers in talking about the word “slut” on the interactive gaming platform. Hosted the same day as World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, #SlutStreamDay is raising money for Freedom 4/24, a nonprofit raising awareness of sex trafficking and exploitation.

“We want any and all streamers who stand against the constant harassment and slut shaming of women to stream dressed in ways that make them feel comfortable and raise awareness for a good cause, Kaviness and O’Hammon wrote on Twitter. Kaviness says harassment on Twitch happens no matter how women dress: “If you’re a female on this website, you’re going to be slutshamed by somebody.”

#SlutStreamDay will take place tomorrow. Over the phone, Kaviness and O’Hammon strategized on what to do if Twitch’s algorithms rain on their parade. Despite streamers’ efforts, it’s ultimately on the company to govern the harassment that takes place on it—an effort that’s can clearly be improved as harassers continually bypass whatever protections are currently in place. O’Hammon says she can’t write the word “slut” in a stream title; Kaviness, who is a Twitch partner, says she can. “Just put a dash where the U is,” O’Hammon suggests.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Auerbach: Back from suspension, Urban Meyer still has not learned anything

The​ past​ two months have​ served​ as​ a referendum​ on​ Urban​ Meyer and​ how he believes men​ should treat​ women.

And​ it’s​​ not “with respect,” as the words he had printed on the walls of the Ohio State football facility may indicate.

Meyer has had multiple chances to respect Courtney Smith and the serious allegations she’s made over the years against Zach Smith, her ex-husband and longtime Meyer assistant who was fired in July. Meyer has had multiple opportunities to apologize to her for what she has endured privately and publicly. He’s had multiple chances to educate himself and discuss the serious nature of domestic violence to help educate others.

He’s taken none of these chances to do the right thing, including a news conference Monday after the end of his three-game suspension. And it’s all because he doesn’t believe Courtney Smith was a victim of domestic violence.

“I feel like he needed to see her with a fat lip and two black eyes to believe her,” Brenda Tracy, one of college football’s leading anti-sexual violence activists, told The Athletic. “He’s not even trying to learn about the dynamics of domestic violence. I see no growth in him from this. He feels put out. He thinks he is the victim.

“It’s frustrating. It’s disgusting. He’s fueling the fire of all of these people who think that domestic victims are liars, that we make stuff up. He is fueling all of these myths.”

Meyer doesn’t seem to understand that domestic violence includes more than just hitting someone, that it looks different in every case and could be financial, mental or emotional abuse, including gaslighting. It’s not just physical violence. It’s threats. It’s intimidation. It’s harassment.

“Research shows that domestic violence survivors are more likely to lie and minimize than to say that something didn’t happen when it did,” Tracy said. “This should be a moment in our history where we are learning about the dynamics of domestic violence. Part of the reason we aren’t learning is because of Urban Meyer. He has so much power and such a big platform that he could be using for good, that he could be using to educate others.

“Instead, he’s using his platform to be stubborn and prop up ideas that need to be changed.”

Stubborn may be the perfect word to describe Meyer’s behavior. Enabling is another.

After nearly two months of lies and inconsistent explanations for his handling of domestic violence allegations against Smith, Meyer now refuses to do anything but dig in his heels. His news conference Monday afternoon showed just as much.

Meyer is still sticking to his story — which was doubted by Ohio State’s own fairly exhaustive investigation — that he didn’t hear directly from his wife, Shelley, that she was “scared” of Smith back in 2015. He’s sticking to a story that he didn’t ask anyone how to delete text messages older than a year off his phone after the first reports of Smith’s alleged history of violence became public, despite investigators finding that he and his director of football operations discussed how to adjust the settings on the phone to delete text messages older than a year. When investigators got access to his phone, they reported that “Coach Meyer’s phone was set to retain text messages only for that period, as Coach Meyer and (director of ops) Brian Voltolini discussed.”

Meyer is even still sticking to the idea that he, alone, could save a staffer’s troubled marriage, even at the same time he’s making a point to say he’s not qualified to investigate allegations like this.

Meyer insists that he doesn’t condone the act of domestic violence and that his core value, that young men in his program respect women, remains unquestioned. But his behavior doesn’t match what he’s saying.

More than once Monday, Meyer compared Courtney Smith’s allegations against Zach Smith to his involvement in other staffers’ “marital issues” or “marriage issues,” not signifying any difference between spousal infidelity or financial problems and serious allegations of domestic violence. More than once, Meyer said “once domestic violence was taken out of the equation,” basing that characterization solely on the lack of charges brought against Zach Smith.

Meyer doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. For example, how hard it is to bring charges in domestic violence cases because so much comes down to he-said, she-said situations with little hard evidence. Or, as Tracy mentioned, how often victims (and others close to them) downplay the violence themselves after the fact for self-preservation and also, sometimes, because of love. Worse than not understanding these things already is that Meyer has had two months to learn. He just hasn’t.

Meyer was asked whether or not he believed that Courtney Smith has ever been a victim of domestic violence.

“I can only rely on what information I received from experts,” Meyer said.

Implicit in that statement is Meyer’s belief that Courtney Smith is not a reliable source of information. Only law enforcement can be, despite how notoriously difficult it is to prosecute cases of domestic violence or sexual assault, not to mention countless examples all over the country over the years of police mishandling such cases. Meyer also is suggesting that an arrest and/or charges are required for taking action. But coaches like Meyer have let assistants and players go for far less.

Meyer isn’t focusing on that larger issue, or the fact that women who have been abused by intimate partners have been watching him and reading about him address these topics for weeks now. He doesn’t seem to understand how him openly questioning the credibility of Courtney Smith hurts them, too.

And he still has the gall to say he respects women. Really.

From "Win The Moment" To "He Said She Said" To "Tuff Perception World": How Urban Meyer And Ohio State Reacted To The Zach Smith News

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Ocasio-Cortez slams image of young men in 'Team Mitch' shirts 'groping & choking' cutout

A photo posted of a group of young men in "Team Mitch" shirts appearing to choke and grope a cardboard cutout of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has led to the congresswoman's firing off a response to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-K.Y., and to one of the men pictured apologizing.

In the image, which made the rounds on the internet Monday, one of the men in the photo has his arm around the cutout and appears to be kissing it. Another looks to be putting his hand around the congresswoman’s neck, as if to choke her.

The photo was posted to Instagram with the caption: “break me off a piece of that.” The post has since been deleted.

On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez retweeted the photo to McConnell, who is up for re-election next year.

"Hey @senatemajldr — these young men look like they work for you," the congresswoman tweeted. "Just wanted to clarify: are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?

The McConnell campaign said in a statement that it “in no way condones” the image, but it condemned "the far-left and the media" for writing about the incident.

“These young men are not campaign staff, they’re high schoolers and it’s incredible that the national media has sought to once again paint a target on their backs rather than report real, and significant news in our country,” said Kevin Golden, McConnell’s campaign manager, in the statement.

The picture was taken over the weekend at the 139th Annual Fancy Farm Picnic in Kentucky, a political event attended by both Democrats and Republicans.

One of the young men involved appeared to apologize online, posting a picture of a note-card that says, “I was wrong ... I’m sorry." In his caption, he wrote: “My friends and I sincerely apologize to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, Senator McConnell, to our school, St. Jerome Parish, and our community for our insensitive actions at Fancy Farm this past weekend.”

NBC News has reached out to the men in the photo for comment via Instagram and the school referred to in the young man's apology. The Rev. Darrell Venters of St. Jerome Catholic Church told NBC News the young men in the photo do not attend his parish.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Video Shows Mateen Cleaves's Accuser Struggling To Flee His Motel Room

Former Michigan State men’s basketball player Mateen Cleaves was acquitted on Tuesday of four sexual assault charges stemming from an incident with a 24-year-old woman in September of 2015. Video of the incident that was shown in the courtroom has since been released because of a public records request from WXYZ Detroit.

Prosecutors argued in court that Cleaves subdued a drunk woman who tried to run away from his motel room while she was still undressed, brought her back, and raped her. The newly released footage shows what happened outside of the room: Cleaves, who wore only socks, chased down the half-naked woman twice to get her back to his room.

One of Cleaves’s attorneys, Mike Manley, categorized the video in his closing arguments as “a gentleman going out to make sure that a lady wasn’t walking around a motel naked.” Manley said the accuser was “an obnoxious, belligerent, remorseful drunk” when she spoke to police, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Michigan State men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo was in the courthouse during the closing statements. Izzo, whose son’s middle name is Mateen, told the Free Press that Cleaves “is part of the family.”[/size][/b]

I can't wait for the "men are being falsely accused" to explain this.

#Resist

P.S.  This post will probably be psi-splained, because everything is about him.

[psiberzerker]

P.S.  This post will probably be psi-splained, because everything is about him.

Everything?  Did you not notice I stopped, or do you just miss it that much?

[Athos_131]

Lewd cheerleader videos, sexist rules: Ex-employees decry Washington’s NFL team workplace

In “Beauties on the Beach,” the official video chronicling the making of the Washington NFL team’s 2008 cheerleader swimsuit calendar, the women frolic in the sand, rave about their custom bikinis and praise a photographer for putting them at ease in settings where sometimes only a strategically placed prop or tightly framed shot shielded otherwise bare breasts.

What the cheerleaders didn’t know was that another video, intended strictly for private use, would be produced using footage from that same shoot. Set to classic rock, the 10-minute unofficial video featured moments when nipples were inadvertently exposed as the women shifted positions or adjusted props.

The lewd outtakes were what Larry Michael, then the team’s lead broadcaster and a senior vice president, referred to as “the good bits” or “the good parts,” according to Brad Baker, a former member of Michael’s staff. Baker said in an interview that he was present when Michael told staffers to make the video for team owner Daniel Snyder.

Snyder and the team provided no comment after they were given repeated opportunities to respond to this and other allegations before the publication of this story. In a statement released hours after this story was published online Wednesday, Snyder wrote, “I do not have any knowledge of the ten-year old videos referenced in the story. I did not request their creation and I never saw them.”

Michael also adamantly denied the allegation.

“Nothing can be further from the truth. I was never asked to nor did I ask someone to compile videos as you described,” Michael said in an interview.

Baker recalls otherwise.

“Larry said something to the effect of, ‘We have a special project that we need to get done for the owner today: He needs us to get the good bits of the behind-the-scenes video from the cheerleader shoot onto a DVD for him,’” said Baker, who was a producer in the team’s broadcast department from 2007 to 2009.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of the 2008 video from another former employee, along with a similar outtakes video from the squad’s swimsuit calendar shoot in the Dominican Republic in 2010 that included a close-up of one cheerleader’s pubic area, obscured only by gold body paint.

In addition, a former broadcasting producer for the team told The Post that Michael ordered that the 2010 video be burned to a DVD titled “For Executive Meeting.” The former producer did not recall Michael mentioning Snyder. Both former employees spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation. Michael denied knowledge of any such videos.

On Aug. 18, The Post emailed the team’s public relations representative a summary of its reporting and detailed questions. The team, through its public relations firm and lawyer, requested additional days to respond and did not accept repeated offers from The Post to show team officials these videos. Ultimately, the team provided no comment, and Snyder did not agree to an interview.

The six-paragraph statement Snyder released Wednesday began: “The behavior described in the Washington Post’s latest story has no place in our franchise, or in our society. While I was unaware of these allegations until they surfaced in the media, I take full responsibility for the culture of our organization.”

In response to last month’s Post report detailing allegations of widespread sexual harassment in his team’s front office, including by Michael, Snyder publicly stated that such behavior “has no place in our franchise” and hired a law firm to “set new employee standards for the future.”

But interviews with more than 100 current and former employees and a review of internal company documents and other records show that, in his 21 years of ownership, Snyder has presided over an organization in which women say they have been marginalized, discriminated against and exploited. The employees also described an atmosphere in which bullying and demeaning behavior by management created a climate of fear that allowed abusive behavior to continue unchecked.

Twenty-five women — most of them speaking on the condition of anonymity because of nondisclosure agreements or fear of reprisal — told The Post that they experienced sexual harassment while working for the team. They described male bosses, colleagues and players commenting on their bodies and clothing, incorporating sexual innuendos into workplace conversation and making unwanted advances in person or via emails, text messages and social media. Many said they were motivated to speak out because they were angered by Snyder’s comments after The Post report last month that detailed allegations from another 17 women, which they read as an attempt to distance himself from the workplace culture described.

One of the women interviewed for this story accused Snyder of directly humiliating her, the first such claim made to The Post. Former cheerleader Tiffany Bacon Scourby said Snyder approached her at a 2004 charity event at which the cheerleaders were performing and suggested she join his close friend in a hotel room so they “could get to know each other better.” Scourby’s account was supported by three friends she spoke to shortly afterward about the alleged incident, including the team’s former cheerleader director.

In his statement, Snyder said: “We are disappointed Ms. Scourby would speak to the newspaper but never bring any of these allegations to management’s attention, particularly since she is still part of our organization as a volunteer with our cheerleaders. I want to unequivocally state that this never happened. Ms. Scourby did not report this alleged incident to anyone on the team in 2004, in her 8 years as a cheerleader, or at any time in the past 16 years.”

Many of the women who have come forward in recent weeks with harassment allegations pointed to former executives named in the previous Post report: Alex Santos, the recently fired pro personnel director; Michael, the club’s longtime radio voice and a senior vice president, who abruptly retired last month; Dennis Greene, former president of business operations, who left in 2018 amid allegations he had sold access to cheerleaders; and Mitch Gershman, former chief operating officer, who left in 2015. Santos and Gershman declined to comment for this story. Greene did not respond to requests for comment.

Some women described an overwhelming sense of helplessness and an absence of options because the team’s one-person human resources department has been supervised by executives who appeared, to them, to condone this behavior. One former intern said she tried to lodge a sexual harassment complaint against Santos in 2016, but Stephen Choi, the organization’s chief financial officer, told her the team had a “male-dominated culture” and she would have to avoid Santos or quit. She quit. Choi declined to comment.

Many women also said gender-based official policies and informal practices limited their ability to do their jobs and denied them opportunities for career advancement.

Alicia Klein, a 27-year-old Georgetown University graduate student when she interned for the team in 2010, said she passed up a chance to extend her internship because she felt so uncomfortable about male executives constantly remarking on her looks.

“It was pervasive,” said Klein, now a sports executive and professor in Brazil. “I didn’t tell anyone because it was embarrassing and demeaning, and I wanted to tell everyone that I had worked in the NFL.”

In 2017, at Choi’s direction, the team’s human resources staffer emailed all employees a “conduct policy” restricting the movement of women in the building to minimize their interaction with players. The email made formal what long had been an understood directive, according to several former employees, that women should avoid football operations areas out of concern they would distract players.

Several women said they endured harassment and verbal abuse that left lingering emotional damage. Some formed an informal online “support group” for former team employees. Some said they felt working for the team left them with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Brittany Pareti, a D.C.-area marketing executive who worked in the team’s community and charitable programs from 2007 to 2012, said she became so angry and depressed during her time with the team that her family staged an intervention to convince her to seek therapy.

“It was like fresh meat to a pack of wolves every time a new pack of interns would come in,” Pareti said. “It was like a frat house, with men lined up in the lobby watching women walk in and out. You constantly felt there were eyes on you.”

Pareti and Scourby are among 12 former team employees who have retained attorney Lisa J. Banks, partner in the D.C. firm Katz, Marshall and Banks, which specializes in civil rights, employment and sexual harassment law.

“A workplace culture this toxic and pervasive, at the highest levels of the organization, simply cannot exist without the knowledge and encouragement of the owner,” said Banks, whose firm represented Palo Alto University professor Christine Blasey Ford when she went public in 2018 with accusations of sexual assault against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, who denied them.

Some former team employees were referred to Banks by the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, an initiative that connects women who are sexually harassed at work with legal and public relations professionals.

The new allegations come at a perilous time for Snyder, 55, who recently dropped the team’s name under pressure from sponsors and critics who said it was racist. He also faces the possible exodus of his three co-owners, who are trying to sell their collective 40 percent stake in the franchise.

Snyder has gone to court twice in recent weeks to defend his reputation. He sued an online media company for publishing what he said were defamatory stories about him.

Snyder also is accusing a former employee, Mary Ellen Blair, and her landlord of helping to orchestrate and bankroll those stories. The landlord is a company led by the son-in-law and daughter of Dwight Schar, one of the minority owners seeking to sell his share of the team. Blair and the company have denied the allegations. In an Aug. 21 court filing, lawyers for the company, Comstock Holdings, characterized Snyder’s pursuit of financial information to bolster his claim as a “speculative fishing expedition.”

Since the first Post report, Snyder has diversified his team’s senior leadership with two high-profile hires. Last week, he named Jason Wright, a former NFL player and partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, as team president; Wright is the first Black person to hold that title in the NFL. Last month, Snyder hired sports broadcaster Julie Donaldson to replace Michael as senior vice president of media, making her the team’s highest-ranking woman.

In his statement, Snyder said: “I have admittedly been too hands-off as an owner and have allowed others to have day-to-day control to the detriment of our organization. Going forward I am going to be more involved, and we have already made major changes in personnel bringing in new leadership to drive the cultural transformation on and off the field.”

Snyder also hired D.C. attorney Beth Wilkinson to conduct a “full, unbiased investigation” of the workplace. Many former employees told The Post they hope the NFL takes over the investigation to ensure thorough scrutiny of Snyder’s conduct. Several incidents they recounted may violate the NFL’s personal conduct policy, which requires team owners, staff members and players to avoid “conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the National Football League.”

“An independent investigation is needed,” Pareti said. “We cannot trust a report from this organization to be unbiased.”

An indecent proposal
Cigar smoke and the laughter and chatter of more than 2,000 of the region’s wealthiest men filled the Washington Hilton ballroom as Fight Night — the bawdy, boxing-themed charity event that was discontinued after last year’s edition — got underway on a November evening in 2004.

The centerpiece of the event, which raised money for children’s charities, was a boxing ring where young fighters competed and Washington’s cheerleaders performed.

Snyder wasn’t a Fight Night regular, attendees said, but a photographer captured him in his tuxedo that night with his arm around Schar. Snyder won an auction for a limited edition Harley-Davidson motorcycle, spending $80,000.

Scourby said she had finished dancing in the ring with her teammates — wearing black bustiers, gold shorts and black fishnet arm stockings — and returned to mingling with guests and selling copies of that year’s swimsuit calendar when she saw Snyder.

“Tiffany!” Scourby recalled Snyder calling to her. Then 26, she had never spoken to Snyder before, she said, and was surprised he knew her name.

Scourby recalled a brief, awkward conversation before Snyder said, “You know, Tony is here,” and gestured to Anthony Roberts, his longtime friend, who was 40 years old at the time.

Roberts, an eye doctor, had performed LASIK surgery on Scourby the year before — one of her friends had recommended him — and she said she had noticed him in Snyder’s suite at FedEx Field before a game a few months later, peering through binoculars and waving at her.

The “official ophthalmologist” of the team, Roberts has known Snyder since they were classmates at a Rockville high school. As teenagers, they watched Washington games together at Snyder’s home in Silver Spring, according to a 1999 Post story. When Snyder had one of his first successful business forays, at 22, he and Roberts bought Porsches together.

“We have a hotel room,” Snyder said that 2004 night, according to Scourby. “Why don’t you and Tony go upstairs and get to know each other better?”

Scourby said she laughed sheepishly and waited for a laugh from Snyder that would indicate he was joking. He didn’t laugh, she said.

“Oh, I’m working. Have a great time,” Scourby said she told him before quickly walking back into the crowd. Later that night, she confided in Donald Wells, the cheerleader director, about the conversation.

“I remember her saying, ‘Daniel Snyder offered me the suite with one of his friends,’ ” said Wells, who led the squad from 1997 to early 2009, when he was laid off with roughly 20 other employees amid the economic downturn. “She was more or less propositioned.”

Two other people supported Scourby’s recollection of that evening: her boyfriend at the time, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and a longtime friend, who said Scourby told her about the incident a few days later.

Snyder “let it be known he had a room in the hotel and Tiffany and his friend should go get to know each other better,” recalled Kristi Kelly, a cannabis industry executive who lives in Michigan. “She gracefully exited the conversation.”

Years later, Scourby said, she is still unsure whether Roberts knew about Snyder’s remark. Roberts did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Post.

“There’s a power dynamic, and Dan Snyder looked down on me,” Scourby said. “Because he‘s powerful and our employer, he thinks he somehow has the right to say these things to us, to make these requests of us, and he doesn’t. It’s disgusting.”

Scourby continued to work as a cheerleader for four years after that Fight Night, serving as team captain in 2008 and representing the team at the 2009 Pro Bowl. A 42-year-old single mother of two young boys, she said she maintains a connection to the team’s cheerleaders as a sideline assistant, a volunteer coaching position.

This is Scourby’s second allegation of inappropriate behavior against a high-profile man. In 2017, she accused actor Jeremy Piven of sexually assaulting her in 2003 during a brief encounter in New York. Piven denied the allegation, along with similar claims of sexual misconduct by seven other women. CBS canceled the drama he was starring in at the time.

“Powerful men in powerful positions need to realize that they can’t do this,” she said.

‘For Executive Meeting’
The request for the unofficial cheerleader video came after a routine production meeting in 2008, according to Baker, a former production manager in the team’s broadcasting department. The cheerleaders recently had returned from their calendar shoot that year in Aruba.

Baker said Michael excused two female colleagues and asked him to stay, along with two male colleagues: Tim DeLaney, then vice president of production, and Marc Dress, a videographer.

After Michael asked for the video of “the good bits,” there was an awkward pause, said Baker, who was unsure what they were being asked to do.

“Yeah, I’ll take care of it,’ ” DeLaney said, according to Baker.

Later that day, Baker said, he walked into the editing room to find DeLaney, assisted by Dress, assembling footage that included multiple shots of cheerleaders’ exposed nipples. His co-workers appeared visibly uncomfortable doing the work, he said.

“Nobody said anything; it was just palpable tension,” said Baker, who was among those laid off in 2009 and now lives in Nashville.

The door, which typically would be open, was shut, Baker said. His co-workers spoke in hushed tones, he said, and when he left the room, DeLaney told him to close the door.

DeLaney and Dress disputed Baker’s account.

“I was never asked to create an outtakes video, and I have no knowledge of anyone creating one or even being asked to create one,” said DeLaney, now vice president of broadcast and digital content for the Arizona Cardinals. “I certainly would have remembered that conversation had it happened.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Dress, now an independent videographer in Maryland. “I was a shooter; I shot it. What happened after I turned it in, I can’t tell you.”

Megan Imbert, a former producer in the broadcast department, said she walked into an editing bay in the summer of 2008 and saw an image on the screen she learned years later from Baker was part of this video: a zoomed-in shot of a cheerleader’s bikini bottom, focused on the pubic area.

“I thought: ‘That’s a really weird place for a shot to be stopped. … I hope that’s never used for anything,’ ” Imbert said.

The 10-minute outtakes video was created June 9, 2008, according to metadata in the video file. A technical analysis by The Post and a researcher from the Informedia Lab at Carnegie Mellon University found no evidence that it had been manipulated. It and a promotional video broadcast by the team share what appear to be identical frames from a topless photo shoot, with the official version blurred and the outtakes version in sharp focus.

The 2010 video featuring partly nude cheerleaders was created June 22 that year, according to its metadata, shortly after the year’s calendar shoot in the Dominican Republic. Both videos share the same soundtrack: The Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and U2’s “Mysterious Ways.” In both outtakes videos, the cheerleaders look directly at the camera repeatedly.

The Post showed the videos to Banks, Scourby’s attorney, who also represents Baker.

“It is absolutely appalling — but perhaps not surprising — that the Washington football organization would produce these highly sexualized videos without the knowledge or consent of the women featured,” Banks said. “The videos appear to have been created to serve no other purpose than to satisfy the prurient interests of the team’s executive leadership.”

The former employee who provided both videos to The Post described seeing a producer splice the footage together for the 2010 video. According to the former employee, the producer identified the footage as “outtakes of the recent cheerleader shoot” and said the video was being compiled for Snyder.

The former employee told The Post, “I saved the video because I didn’t think anyone would believe it was real.” This former employee decided to provide the videos to The Post after its July 16 report, out of a desire to see the NFL “hold the team more accountable.”

The producer did not recall the brief exchange described by the former co-worker but said it was plausible because the outtakes were put together in a shared editing room. The producer said Michael asked for the calendar footage to be scoured for “the good stuff” — partially nude and other salacious moments — and to splice it together onto a DVD titled, “For Executive Meeting.” Michael never said explicitly that the video was for Snyder, according to the producer, who said two copies were given to Michael.

The producer viewed the 2010 video obtained by The Post and confirmed its authenticity. In an interview, the producer expressed shame for taking part in its production. “It was extremely unprofessional and perverted, the kind of culture that would only exist in a world where there were barely any women in powerful positions, no human resources and no accountability,” the producer said.

Contacted by The Post, Michael had no explanation for who edited the videos reviewed by The Post and said he could not explain why multiple, lower-level employees who worked for the team in different years said managers had ordered up the videos for team executives. The former employee who provided the videos to The Post reached out through a newsroom tip line. Baker separately told The Post what he recalled about the 2008 version. Post reporters then contacted former employees from the same time period, including the one who confirmed making the 2010 video.

In interviews with The Post, as they learned about the unofficial videos for the first time, several former cheerleaders said they felt exploited by an organization that, at the time, paid them each about $1,000 per year.

Heather Tran, who posed for the 2008 calendar, said she asked for a “closed shoot,” in which only essential staff, the photographer and the videographer were allowed to attend.

“I feel betrayed and violated,” said Tran, who was 29 when she posed topless. In the authorized version of the video, several beaded necklaces covered parts of her breasts; in the unauthorized version, her nipples are briefly exposed.

Now a 41-year-old business analyst, she cheered for the team from 2004 to 2010 and has worked as a sideline assistant since then. Shown the 2008 outtakes video, she said she was sure it was compiled from the same footage as the promotional videos broadcast on television and online.

Scourby was involved in both shoots: in 2008 as a cheerleader and in 2010 as a volunteer helping to coordinate the shoot. She also viewed the videos and said she was certain the footage came from the team’s videographers.

“I’m horrified. I’m nauseous,” Scourby said. “The video was a huge violation of my sisters and I.”

Wells, the longtime cheerleader director, was so taken aback by the news of the videos that he cried.

“I worked so hard to protect them,” he said. “They are daughters and wives and mothers. This is disgusting.”

Another former cheerleader, Brittni Abell, whose nipples were visible through body paint in the 2010 outtakes but airbrushed in the official promotional videos that year, issued a statement through lawyer Gloria Allred: “If these allegations are true, the use of my image in such an inappropriate manner, without my knowledge or consent, is reprehensible and appalling.”

‘Led by fear’
Shortly after reporting for their first day of work at team headquarters in Ashburn, dozens of employees said, they learned several unwritten rules: Always call the owner “Mr. Snyder” or “Sir,” never “Dan.” Never look him in the eyes. And if he comes walking your way, turn around and head in the other direction.

“The fear is instilled in employees from Day One,” said Imbert, who worked for the team from 2008 until 2011. “The organization is led by fear.”

Susan Miller, a retired former president of a Virginia employee referral agency, said she stopped sending people to work for the team in the early 2000s after growing appalled by how Snyder treated his employees.

“He denigrated people. He treated women like servants,” Miller said. One time, in 2000 or 2001, Miller recalled, she got a phone call from Snyder’s executive assistant informing her Snyder had fired a woman Miller had referred there because he thought she looked “frumpy” or “dowdy.”

“He’d just passed her in the hall once … and then just said, ‘Get rid of her,’ ” Miller said. The executive assistant did not respond to requests for comment.

Former executive assistants to Snyder described a high-pressure job with high turnover that requires two or three staffers to ensure, among many other duties, that his bar has an ample supply of Crown Royal XR and that the end of the toilet paper in his private bathroom is folded in a hotel-style point.

Those who work directly for Snyder heed a long list of protocols, according to three former executive assistants: Don’t speak too loudly; never eat in front of him; don’t go to the bathroom unless another assistant is available to cover the phones; don’t take a lunch break, but if you must eat at your desk, make sure the food doesn’t smell; clean the owner’s desk each morning, ensuring that his calendar and daily kitchen menu are in the proper locations and that his paper clips all face the same direction.

Female assistants said additional directives often put them in no-win situations: Wear heels but don’t let your heels clack loudly. Wear smart business attire but be prepared to run down two flights of stairs and up again for ice from the kitchen in the basement, which Snyder preferred over the ice from the kitchen on the executive floor.

“When he wants something, he wanted it 10 minutes ago,” a former executive assistant said. “I can’t tell you how much running I did. … I was drenched in sweat more often than not. For ice cubes. I felt like part of my job description apparently was cocktail waitress in the evening.”

A lack of human resources
Former employees from across Snyder’s tenure, in interviews, scoffed at what they considered the team’s inadequate human resources department: one full-time employee who reports to the chief financial officer. While the team’s code of conduct forbids “unwelcome or unsolicited sexual advances” and conduct that “creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment,” dozens of women said they routinely experienced unwelcome advances.

“Things that go on there would never go on in a normal office,” said Michelle Tessier, the team’s public relations director from 2000 to 2004. “Being friendly was taken as an invitation to make comments. I was cornered in offices. … There would be no one else around, and the flirting and the innuendo starts, and they take it too far.”

Since 2016, the team’s lone human resources staffer has reported to Choi, the chief financial officer, whose handling of two situations described by former employees deepened a sense that the team’s code of conduct regarding sexual harassment and gender equality existed only on paper.

Choi, who has worked for the team since 2009, declined an interview request through a team spokesman.

In early 2016, Shannon Slate, a 22-year-old college intern at the time, said she met with Choi to try to file a complaint against Santos, then 40.

In a phone interview, Slate described her increasing level of discomfort as Santos pursued her throughout her internship. It started with daily visits to her desk and unwanted gifts such as a team visor or a water bottle.

One day after work, Slate said, Santos called her, asking about her favorite bars and whether she would date him. Santos would stop by daily and comment on her clothing, she said, including a day she wore a blue dress she considered professional and Santos told her, “That’s a little too short for me not to look at.”

Counseled by two female supervisors, Slate said, she went to Choi. His reaction marked an end to Slate’s career in professional sports.

“He basically said: … ‘This is a sports organization; men dominate it,’ ” Slate recalled. “ ‘You have two options: Keep your distance from Alex, or you can end the internship early.’ I ended the internship early.”

Slate’s account was supported by a college roommate she told at the time as well as by Slate’s older sister.

“I guess they kind of wanted to sweep it under the rug,” said Ashley Slate, a nanny in Monmouth Beach, N.J. “I wanted to call them and ask them what the hell was wrong with them.”

Santos declined to comment.

Under Choi, an email sent to all employees in 2017 sparked outrage among women. The Post obtained a copy of the email.

The email, sent by Julie Kalmanides, the team’s sole human resources employee, included a list of “conduct policies.” Among them, Kalmanides wrote, “It has also been requested that, if at all possible, females are not present in any football areas while the players are here.”

The implication, made clear in follow-up instructions by team executives, according to four women, was that they were “a distraction” to players.

They said executives told female employees that, as a practical matter, men generally should perform any task that required going to the first floor at team headquarters — where the locker room, weight room, training room and team dining room are located. If women were assigned such a task but could not delegate, they were told, they could go downstairs only if accompanied by a male employee.

Kalmanides, who now works in human resources for D.C. United, Washington’s Major League Soccer club, said in a statement to The Post that the email was written by senior executives she declined to name. Kalmanides reported directly to Choi.

“At their request, I distributed the email to all staff. … I had no involvement in the creation of this instruction,” she wrote.

Women in the team’s sales, marketing and sponsorship departments who might be escorting clients from the front lobby to the practice fields said the policy presented three options: Lead their guests around the side of the building and down a hill on a path used by golf carts to reach the field; direct clients to walk themselves down the staircase and out to the field while explaining that they would have to walk around the building and meet them outside; or violate the policy and escort guests down the staircase their male colleagues were allowed to access.

“We are adults in a workplace,” one female former marketing employee said. “Women were professionally dressed. … That’s on the men for not being able to keep it professional.”

‘Big ideas’ ignored
In May 2018, Snyder made a decision that, for a few months, gave many younger staffers hope the team’s culture was finally about to change: He hired Brian Lafemina, then a senior vice president at the NFL, as the team’s president of business operations and chief operating officer.

Lafemina, whom Snyder publicly praised for “fresh thinking and big ideas,” got to work.

He publicly acknowledged that a season ticket waiting list the team once claimed included 200,000 people no longer existed. He offered discounted tickets to government employees, scouts and service members. And he pledged to “treat [fans] the way they ought to be treated.”

Internally, Lafemina distributed copies of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” to front-office managers, hoping to spur a cultural shift based on the leadership manual’s lessons on trust, commitment and accountability. When he learned how female employees had been treated, he responded swiftly.

Rachel Engleson was the messenger. A 2010 Maryland graduate, she said she endured years of sexual harassment from Michael during her ascent from unpaid intern to senior director of marketing and client services.

It started with comments about her hair and outfits, she said, and it escalated to kisses on the cheek, a suggestive email and unwelcome hugs. Nearly all of those overtures were in front of others, she said, making her humiliation worse.

Because Engleson had no faith in the team’s human resources office, she said, she informed her supervisor at the time, Jason Friedman, who offered to tell Michael to leave her alone. According to Engleson, Friedman did so, and it helped for a time — until Michael, who was more than 30 years older and a senior vice president, resumed his unwelcome overtures at training camp in 2013.

In an interview with the The Post, Michael denied repeated instances of harassment and any improper touching but acknowledged making one inappropriate remark in her presence, which he declined to detail.

“There were things that were said and done in public involving Rachel that I have apologized for,” Michael said.

Friedman did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Several years later, after Lafemina’s arrival, Engleson requested a meeting with his new deputies, Steven Ziff and Jake Bye, to tell them how the team treated women.

“They needed to know what they were getting into,” said Engleson, now 31. “And I needed to know, for my own future, if the place was going to change.”

Engleson said she told Ziff and Bye about Michael’s harassment. She also told them about the team’s inadequate process for reporting harassment and her wariness of confiding in any executive close to Snyder.

“They were horrified,” said Engleson, who wept while recounting the conversation. “I could not look them in the eye. I was looking at the ground the entire time. They both said, ‘This is not normal, and this is not okay, and this is not what it’s like anywhere else.’ ”

Lafemina followed up once he was informed, according to Engleson. He brought in a consultant from New York to lead workplace training on sexual harassment — the first such training arranged by the team, she said, during her eight-year tenure.

Lafemina and Ziff declined to comment for this story. Bye could not be reached to comment.

Not everyone shared Lafemina’s vision for a new era. His three-year business plan, which included limiting the number of FedEx Field tickets available to opponents’ fans on the resale market, predictably resulted in short-term financial declines in exchange for what he envisioned as long-term gains. But after one financial quarter showed a steep revenue drop, Snyder fired him and two of his deputies Dec. 26, 2018, after less than eight months on the job. Bye had resigned Dec. 21.

Employees were informed that afternoon in a hastily called meeting led by Terry Bateman, a former team executive whom Snyder had recently rehired. The team declined to make Bateman available for an interview.

According to Engleson and several others who attended the meeting, Bateman sought to allay concerns, explaining that the organization would be “going back to how things were.”

“What do you mean, ‘Back to how things were?’ ” Engleson recalled asking.

Within six months, Engleson was among more than 40 employees — one-fourth of the team’s non-football staff — who left the team, convinced the culture change they had been counting on would never come.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[_priapism]

Sports, and particularly professional sports, have a 100 year history of exploiting minorities and women for profit. Not too surprising when they treat their cheerleaders like so many cattle. And considering the team involved, it’s absolutely not too surprising.

[Athos_131]

Donald Trump accused of sexual assault by former model Amy Dorris

A former model has come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open tennis tournament more than two decades ago, in an alleged incident that left her feeling “sick” and “violated”.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Amy Dorris alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament in New York on 5 September 1997.

Dorris, who was 24 at the time, accuses Trump of forcing his tongue down her throat, assaulting her all over her body and holding her in a grip she was unable to escape from.

“He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything.

“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it,” she said, adding: “I don’t know what you call that when you’re sticking your tongue just down someone’s throat. But I pushed it out with my teeth. I was pushing it. And I think I might have hurt his tongue.”

Via his lawyers, Trump denied in the strongest possible terms having ever harassed, abused or behaved improperly toward Dorris.

Dorris, who lives in Florida, provided the Guardian with evidence to support her account of her encounters with Trump, including her ticket to the US Open and six photos showing her with the real estate magnate over several days in New York. Trump was 51 at the time and married to his second wife, Marla Maples.

Her account was also corroborated by several people she confided in about the incident. They include a friend in New York and Dorris’s mother, both of whom she called immediately after the alleged incident, as well as a therapist and friends she spoke to in the years since. All said Dorris had shared with them details of the alleged incident that matched what she later told the Guardian.

Dorris, now 48 and a mother to twin daughters, said she had considered speaking publicly about the incident in 2016, when several women made public similar accusations against the then Republican candidate for president. But she decided against coming forward, in part because she thought that doing so might harm her family.

“Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you don’t let anybody do anything to you that you don’t want,” she said. “And I’d rather be a role model. I want them to see that I didn’t stay quiet, that I stood up to somebody who did something that was unacceptable.”

Dorris said she spent several days with Trump in September 1997 after being taken to New York for a long weekend by her then boyfriend, Jason Binn. At the time, Dorris was living with friends in Boca Raton, Florida, regularly travelling to Miami for modelling and occasional acting work. Binn, the founder of several luxury fashion and lifestyle magazines, was a friend of Trump; in 1999, he reportedly described the real estate businessman as his “best friend”.

On Friday 5 September, Dorris said Binn took her to meet Trump at his office in Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, before they went together to the US Open in Queens.

“He came on very strong right away,” Dorris said of Trump. “It seemed typical of a certain guy, people who just feel like they’re entitled to do what they want … even though I was there with my boyfriend.”

The couple were joined by other friends of Trump in his private box, a luxury carpeted suite that had a balcony overlooking the court. Photos from the day show Dorris alongside Trump and his friend Marylou Whitney.

Dorris said the alleged assault occurred when she got up to go to the bathroom, which was hidden behind a partition wall just metres from where Trump’s guests were watching the tennis. “I was having some issues with my contact lenses,” she said. “I remember going in there to moisten my lens.”

When she came out, she alleges, Trump was waiting outside. “Initially I thought that he was waiting to go to the bathroom, but that wasn’t the case, unfortunately,” she said. She alleges Trump forced himself on her after a brief exchange in which she recalls nervously laughing and telling him: “No, get away.”

She alleged she told Trump “no, please stop” but “he didn’t care”. “It doesn’t matter who you are,” she said. “Any time anyone says no, no means no. And that just didn’t work out for me. It wasn’t enough.”

“I just kind of was in shock,” she added. “I felt violated, obviously. But I still wasn’t processing it and just was trying to go back to talking to everyone and having a good time because, I don’t know, I felt pressured to be that way.”

Dorris cannot recall if she told Binn the full details of the alleged assault, but she says she asked him to tell Trump to leave her alone. She said she told Binn: “He’s all over me. I can’t deal with this. You have to do something.”

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB