Laura Luhn isn’t the first, and she likely won’t be the last person to come forward and blast the shit out of the late Fox News’ network head Roger Ailes, his Fox producer and executive Bill Shine, or 21st Century Fox over allegations of sexual abuse and blackmail.
Luhn, a former booker for Fox News, filed a lawsuit Wednesday in New York state court outlining the years of sexual abuse she endured while working with the late Ailes. Luhn’s suit asserts that Ailes “used his position as the head of Fox News to trap Laura W. Luhn in a decades-long cycle of sexual abuse.”
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The suit alleges that Ailes took photos and videos of Luhn before she joined Fox in 1996, and then used the “compromising” images as “blackmail material that he [Ailes] explicitly described as his ‘insurance policy.’”
Luhn rose to senior director of corporate and special events before leaving Fox in 2011, HuffPost reports. The suit claims that Shine, who left Fox in 2017 to serve a short stint in former President Donald Trump’s communications office, “did nothing to stop it [the abuse].”
Ailes died in 2017 at age 77 after he was forced out of Fox with a reported $40 million in severance. So far, 21st Century Fox has paid out more than $45 million in settlements related to Ailes’ abusive behavior.
Luhn’s complaint, which she filed under the Adult Survivors Act, alleges:
“At their very first encounter, Ailes set the stage by blackmailing Luhn and taking videos of her performing coerced sex acts. He physically forced Luhn to perform oral sex on him regularly. And he constantly reminded Luhn that he ‘owned’ her, that she was his ‘sex slave,’ and that she was forbidden from telling anyone about the abuse or he would make her pay dearly.”
Barbara Whiten Balliette, attorney for Luhn, told The Daily Beast: “The abuse that Ms. Luhn suffered was some of the worst imaginable. People knew, but no one at Fox News stepped in to stop it. Her career and her life were destroyed. The Adult Survivors Act was created to redress wrongs exactly like these.”
A statement sent to The Hill by a Fox News spokesman reads: “This matter was settled years ago, dismissed in subsequent litigation, and is meritless.”
In 2021, Luhn told The Daily Beast that Fox’s attorneys were attempting to bully her, and that after she began to suffer from mental health issues, Shine stepped in to convince her to sign a “release” of her claims and handed her a severance to shut her up, per The Daily Beast.
Luhn said at her three-hour deposition that she attempted suicide four times following her 14 years at Fox.
“In the period when Ailes was abusing her, Luhn had a front-row seat to the very public intimidation campaign that Fox News waged against another victim after she lodged disturbing allegations against Fox News star, Bill O’Reilly. In private conversations with Luhn, Ailes explicitly reinforced the message that this public campaign was designed to convey to Luhn and other would-be accusers: come forward at your own peril,” the lawsuit states.
In an email Luhn sent to The Daily Beast, she wrote, “They are still terrorizing me and attacking me. Coming to my house last Tuesday in the darkness of night? Beyond outrageous, but consistent with the Roger Ailes Playbook. I suffer from ONGOING trauma, and physical pain … not PTSD.”
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