Sexual harassment

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    Colonel Found Guilty of Sexual Harassment in Trial Seen as a Milestone

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    The conviction is considered one of the first of its kind since Congress required the military to change how its legal system addresses sexual assault and harassment.A former Army battalion commander has been found guilty in a military court of sexually harassing a subordinate, one of the first cases of its kind brought after an overhaul of the military’s legal system that established sexual harassment as a criminal offense.The officer, Lt. Col. Herman West of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a female officer in his command, making unwanted comments and touching her inappropriately. He faced additional charges over his treatment of other female officers at the base.A court-martial judge on Friday found him guilty of sexual harassment, conduct unbecoming of an officer and maltreatment. Colonel West, who had been removed from his leadership role in the battalion as a result of the case, was fined over $92,000 and received a written reprimand in his personnel file. The conviction is considered to be a felony-level offense.According to court documents, Colonel West used sexually suggestive language when talking with the officer in his command. The documents also said that he had unbuttoned his pants in front of her, in addition to the inappropriate touching.During a Friday afternoon sentencing hearing, Colonel West apologized to the victims. According to a local television station in Washington, he looked directly at the female officer at the center of the case and said, “My actions were despicable.” He added, “You’ve done nothing wrong.” The woman’s name has not been publicly released.Criminalizing sexual harassment in the military was part of a broader set of changes mandated by a bipartisan law passed by Congress in 2021, the largest overhaul in generations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (Previously, the military’s legal system did not specifically include sexual harassment as an offense, and prosecutors had to rely on other misconduct charges to bring criminal cases.) The changes also stripped commanders’ authority to decide whether to pursue charges in sexual abuse cases and other serious crimes, transferring that responsibility to specialized prosecutors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s White House is filling with alleged sexual abusers … led by him

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      Donald Trump was found civilly liable last year for the defamation and sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Carroll – just one of the more than 27 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. In January 2025, he will again be president of the United States – the first to take office with a court-adjudicated history of sex crimes.And it seems he’s eager to pack the White House with people just like him.Four of president-elect Trump’s cabinet-level nominees have faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct, ranging from workplace sexual harassment to assault, and a fifth is embroiled in a sexual abuse-related lawsuit.As Americans brace themselves for Trump 2.0, it’s time to be clear-eyed about the Maga machine: a history of alleged sexual criminality isn’t a bug, it’s a central part of the hardware; an organizing principle that clarifies how Trump and those like him view their power and how they intend to wield it.Trump’s first choice for attorney general, the former representative Matt Gaetz, was concurrently under investigation by the Department of Justice and the House ethics committee for allegedly violating federal sex-trafficking laws and statutory rape. The disgraced representative also reportedly bragged about his sexual conquests and showed nude photos of women to his fellow lawmakers. On Thursday afternoon, Gaetz announced he would be withdrawing his name from consideration to avoid being a “distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition”, just hours before CNN published a report about a second alleged sexual encounter between Gaetz and a 17-year-old. (The age of consent in Florida is 18.)Gaetz’s withdrawal provided a brief moment of relief. But, still, Trump’s would-be cabinet is filled with alleged criminals, all of whom the president-elect has vociferously defended, and all of whom deny wrongdoing.Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped for the made-up position of “efficiency czar”, reportedly exposed his penis to a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016 and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for sex. Musk’s company SpaceX paid her $250,000 in 2018 to settle the sexual misconduct claim. He was also sued this year by eight former SpaceX employees, who alleged that the CEO treated “women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter”.Then there’s the nominee for secretary of defense, the Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was accused of sexually assaulting a staff member of the California Federation of Republican Women in 2017.In the police report that was filed at the time, and which was obtained by the New York Times, the unnamed woman told law enforcement that Hegseth had taken her phone and blocked her exit from his hotel room before assaulting her. Though Hegseth was never charged with a crime, he did enter into a nondisclosure agreement with the woman, which included a financial settlement.Robert F Kennedy Jr was accused of sexually assaulting Eliza Cooney, a former family babysitter, in the late 90s. Trump now wants him to run the Department of Health and Human Services.Finally, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, was recently named in a lawsuit alleging that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, failed to stop an employee from sexually abusing children in the 1980s and 90s, when the McMahons were running World Wrestling Entertainment. (An attorney for McMahon told CNN that the lawsuit is “filled with scurrilous lies.”)These picks feel comically brazen, like shots fired directly at the #MeToo movement, which erupted in the wake of Trump’s election in 2016. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Trump, a man who has threatened to sue every one of his accusers and has openly bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” without their consent, is attempting to exact revenge on a movement designed to use the collective to force consequences for a handful of powerful predators.#MeToo was just one piece of a slate of shifting gender norms over the last decade. Now, we’re living in the middle of a backlash.Roe v Wade has fallen, a known sexual abuser is re-entering the Oval Office, and the very online far right has found a new slogan: “Your body, my choice.”In Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,she writes that these moments of backlash are not random. They are “preemptive strikes”, which “have always been triggered by the perception – accurate or not – that women are making great strides”.The perception that women were gaining status at the expense of men’s, combined with the real ways in which many men in this country are struggling economically, socially and mentally, has seemingly helped fuel the Trump campaign.Trump sneered at “childless cat ladies”, courted Joe Rogan listeners and crypto-bros, and trotted out Hulk Hogan to perform hyper-macho drag at the Republican national convention. The campaign deployed far-right influencers to wax poetic on X – which Musk owns – about the dangers of “toxic femininity” and mock the peeing habits of men who supported Kamala Harris.On election day, Trump senior adviser and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller tweeted a very particular plea: “Get every man you know to the polls.” After Trump’s win, the far right were out in full force celebrating what they clearly perceived not just as a win for their preferred political leader, but for their gender as a whole; they flooded X and TikTok with the phrases “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” and crafted supercuts of liberal women crying.Perhaps what Trump is counting on is that people who oppose the draconian agenda of his administration will be so exhausted by the piling horrors that they’ll get overwhelmed and give up – that all of the allegations will blend together and the backlash will become the norm. And yet, we know where a backlash brews, so does a resistance to it. More

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      in Elections

      New York Can Do Better Than Andrew Cuomo

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      There are many ways for New York City to turn the page on Mayor Eric Adams.None of them need to include Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor now plotting a comeback as mayor. Yet he is working the phones right now, trying to persuade donors and New York Democrats to back him for mayor in a special election if Mr. Adams resigns in the wake of his recent indictment. It is up to Democratic leaders as well as voters to make it clear that Mr. Cuomo has no political future — not as a replacement for Mr. Adams, and not in any vainglorious attempt to return to the governor’s office, either.Before abjectly resigning in 2021, having been accused in a state attorney general report of sexually harassing 11 women, Mr. Cuomo did some things well as governor. He was adept at slashing through the state’s thicket of bureaucracy to finish big infrastructure projects. New York’s airports are much improved, for example, for which Mr. Cuomo deserves credit.The press briefings he held during the pandemic defending public health measures, like mask mandates and vaccinations, were a balm of responsible leadership during the Trump presidency. They were undermined, however, when the public later learned that Mr. Cuomo’s officials had helped cover up the deaths of more than 4,000 people who had died of Covid in nursing homes.But after nearly four years of visionless mediocrity and cronyism, New York City needs a mayor who is deeply ethical and treats his staff with respect. It needs a mayor who puts the priorities of the public above his own political ambition and personal interest. It needs a mayor, in fact, who likes living in New York City.None of that describes Mr. Cuomo, whose toxic bullying of state employees was legendary in Albany, whose trampling of fundamental ethics was continuous. If he does run for mayor, the public will need answers to some basic questions, including who is funding his campaign and when and how he established residency in New York City. For years, he lived in Albany and Westchester.The 2020 report from Letitia James, the state attorney general, found Mr. Cuomo had sexually harassed numerous women who worked for him in his role as governor, then used the powers of that office to punish women who complained, an abuse of power. In a state with a normally functioning Democratic Party, a governor forced to resign amid serious allegations of sexual harassment wouldn’t be the first choice to replace a mayor under criminal indictment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Garth Brooks Names Woman Who Accused Him of Rape

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      In a court filing, lawyers for the country superstar portrayed him as “the victim of a shakedown” and asked for compensatory and punitive damages.Garth Brooks, the country superstar, has named the woman who, as Jane Roe, accused him of rape and sexual assault in a bombshell lawsuit last week.In a court filing in Mississippi on Tuesday, lawyers for Mr. Brooks portrayed the star as “the victim of a shakedown” and said the woman’s lawyers had “flouted” the authority of a judge in a related case.Litigation over the woman’s accusations began last month with a lawsuit that was filed anonymously — as John Doe v. Jane Roe — in federal court in Mississippi. The plaintiff, identified only as “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee,” said that lawyers for a woman had approached him in July with what he described as false allegations of sexual assault, and that they would sue Mr. Brooks unless he gave the woman “a multimillion-dollar payment.” The man asked the Mississippi judge to preserve the parties’ anonymity and declare that the woman’s accusations were false.In a response, lawyers for the woman said they intended to sue the man in California, saying that “Ms. Roe respectfully requests that she may commence her California action as she intended to do, and use Mr. Doe’s name, absent objection from this Honorable Court.”The court did not act, and two days later the woman filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, naming Mr. Brooks but not herself. The suit accused Mr. Brooks of raping her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2019, and of subjecting her to repeated unwanted sexual advances for about two years. The woman described herself as a hair and makeup stylist who had worked with Mr. Brooks’s wife, the country singer Trisha Yearwood, since 1999, and had begun working regularly for Mr. Brooks in 2017.The suit drew wide coverage in the news media, and its portrayal of Mr. Brooks ran counter to the positive public image he had cultivated for decades.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      NYPD Officer Harasses Brooklyn Man With Voice Mail of Dolphin Noises

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      Officer Brendan Sullivan was hit with a fine for harassing a Brooklyn resident who had complained about illegally parked police cruisers.Officer Brendan Sullivan first used the breathy voice of a seductive woman. Then he panted.Then came the animal noises.Paul Vogel, a 52-year-old Brooklyn man, was the recipient of the menagerie of voice mail messages. For years, he had been frustrated at police cruisers and Fire Department vehicles parked on the sidewalk and in crosswalks in his Prospect Heights neighborhood, which drove him to call the city’s 311 complaint line hundreds of times. Officer Sullivan retaliated, calling him and leaving voice mail messages for 10 months, according to city records.On May 16, 2021, the officer used his department-issued phone and left a voice mail of dolphin noises, according to the records. Nine days later, he escalated the harassment, adding seal barks and the bleating of sheep.The six messages that Officer Sullivan left between March 2, 2021, and Jan. 24, 2022, came to light after the city’s Department of Investigation began looking into retaliation by the police against people who had complained about illegal parking. Streetsblog, an online news organization, had been publishing stories about the allegations, including one that quoted Mr. Vogel.Last month, Officer Sullivan agreed to pay the price: a $500 fine to the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, which concluded in a disposition that Officer Sullivan had “sought to discourage a citizen from exercising his constitutional right about government action.” He also had to give up 60 days of annual leave, which is worth about $25,000 in pay.Dolphin, Seals and SheepA New York Police Department officer admitted leaving harassing voice mails for a man who had complained about parking.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      New York Philharmonic Opens Its Season Amid Labor Talks and Troubles

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      The orchestra is working to negotiate a new contract with musicians, resolve a misconduct inquiry and hire a new chief executive.On a recent night at Lincoln Center, a group of New York Philharmonic musicians, dressed in matching black shirts and carrying union leaflets, fanned out and began to evangelize.“Support the musicians!” Thomas Smith, a trumpet player, told a crowd of concertgoers.It was one of the New York Philharmonic’s first concerts of the fall, and the musicians, in the middle of high-stake labor talks, were alerting their audience to what they hoped would be embraced as startling facts.The orchestra’s players have not had a raise since 2019, and they are paid substantially less than colleagues in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.“We need your help,” Alina Kobialka, a violinist, said as she handed out leaflets.The scene was a reminder of the stark challenges this season for the Philharmonic, which not so long ago seemed to be beginning a vibrant new chapter.The labor agreement between management and the musicians expires on Friday, only a few days before the orchestra’s opening gala, a major fund-raising event.The Philharmonic lacks a permanent president and chief executive, after the sudden resignation in July of its leader, Gary Ginstling. An investigation into sexual harassment and misconduct at the Philharmonic has dragged on. And the ensemble, which is awaiting the arrival in 2026 of the star conductor Gustavo Dudamel, has no full-time music director this season or next.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      San Diego School Superintendent Is Fired After Misconduct Investigation

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      Lamont Jackson, who led California’s second-largest school district, engaged in “unwelcome, sex-based behavior” toward two female employees, the investigation found.The superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District was fired on Friday after an investigation had found that he had acted inappropriately toward two female employees, district officials said.Lamont Jackson, who had overseen California’s second-largest school district since 2021, engaged in “unwelcome, sex-based behavior” with two former district management employees, an outside investigation commissioned by the district found. The termination took effect immediately, and the deputy superintendent, Fabiola Bagula, stepped in to lead the district, which has about 115,000 students.Dr. Jackson, 54, could not immediately be reached for comment.Dr. Jackson, who worked for San Diego Unified for more than three decades, became interim superintendent in 2021 after the district’s former head, Cindy Marten, was appointed as U.S. deputy secretary of education by President Biden. The following year, the school board unanimously voted to award Dr. Jackson a four-year contract in the role. In a statement at the time, the board said that Dr. Jackson, a San Diego native, had brought “the experience and leadership skills to the district that our students, staff and community deserve.” The San Diego Union-Tribune also reported that year that principals praised him for how much he cares about his students and staff members.The allegations against Dr. Jackson came to light this past April, and the school district hired the Los Angeles-based law firm Sanchez & Amador to look into them. The two employees, who were not named, were fired in 2023, in what they believed was retaliation for rebuffing Dr. Jackson’s advances.The four-month investigation confirmed that Dr. Jackson had engaged in sexual behavior toward the women but did not find that they were terminated for turning him down, according to documents shared with The Times. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Kennedy Sent Apologetic Text to Woman Who Accused Him of Sexual Assault

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      The independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. privately apologized last week to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a recent magazine article, The Washington Post reported on Friday.The woman, Eliza Cooney, now 48, had worked for Mr. Kennedy’s family as a weekend babysitter in her early 20s, the year she graduated from college, and at the same time was an intern at his environmental legal clinic at Pace Law School in White Plains, N.Y. In an article in Vanity Fair last week, she said Mr. Kennedy made unwanted sexual advances toward her while she was at his family home in the late 1990s, including by groping her in a pantry.Ms. Cooney told The Post that Mr. Kennedy had called her twice on July 3 of this year, after the Vanity Fair article had run, and then sent her two text messages, which she also showed to The New York Times.“I hope you are well,” he wrote in the first message. “Please call me if you have a moment.”In the second, sent shortly after midnight, he wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident, but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings.”He said he hoped she would be willing to speak to him over the phone or in person.Mr. Kennedy declined to comment on the messages or on Ms. Cooney’s allegations. In a podcast interview last week, after the Vanity Fair article came out, he declined to address her allegations but said he was not a “church boy.” He added, “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”Ms. Cooney did not respond to his outreach, and did not welcome it, she told The Times. “Sending a text at 12:33 a.m. is not considering his actions’ effects on someone else — me,” she said. “At that time, on Fourth of July weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to him.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More