BetterWorks and CEO Sued By Ex-employee For Alleged Sexually Suggestive Assault (techcrunch.com) 79
From a report: Beatrice Kim is suing her former employer, BetterWorks, and its CEO Kris Duggan for allegedly assaulting her in a sexual manner during a company retreat. The lawsuit also implicates the performance management software startup's regional VP Matt Hart and VP of People Operations Tamara Cooksey for allowing sexual harassment in the workplace and not taking action against Duggan after the alleged assault was reported to the company. Kim is suing over sexual harassment and discrimination, assault and battery, demanding a jury trial, Kim's lawyer Conor D. Mack of Arena Hoffman LLP told TechCrunch.
WTF is "Sexually Suggestive Assault"?! (Score:1)
Was it a sexual assault?..
Ok, so it was — or is alleged to have been — a sexual assault. Why would anyone call it sexually suggestive instead?
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Why does local TV news tend to do in-depth expose's of the prostitution industry during May sweeps?
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It's basically a troll headline/summary: lead with the stuff about sexually suggestive talk in the workplace, note the existence of a sexual assault lawsuit, and rely on "MRA" types with short attention spans leaping to the conclusion that the CEO has been sued for sexually assaulting someone with words. Then quietly bury the graphic details of a sexual assault at the bottom of the article, which nobody gets to because they're too busy posting their outrage at feminazis.
Then sit back and enjoy the ad revenu
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"Remember ladies, the phrase "grabbing a guy by the balls" is hyperbole,"
Sometimes.
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Re:WTF is "Sexually Suggestive Assault"?! (Score:4, Informative)
If you RTFA, he didn't grab her leg. He came into her cabin during a company retreat while dead drunk, grabbed her legs and put them up in the air, then started grinding on her while she was on her back while she's begging him to stop. Eventually a co-worker came and rescued her, at which point she hides and sobs until she gets escorted away.
Then the CEO issues a company wide apology letter for his misbehavior while drunk during the retreat and hires a third party investigator, who determines that no wrong-doing took place.
The Sexual Harassment is Important (Score:2, Informative)
The sexual harassment in the workplace is important for the lawsuit. This woman is suing her former employer, BetterWorks, for allowing the CEO to continue after they had been informed of his problem. If Duggan's sexual assault against this woman had been the first time he had done something sexually inappropriate, then BetterWorks would not have had borne any responsibility.
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"Plaintiff was partly laying on one of the beds in cabin #143 when Duggan entered the cabin and immediately picked up Plaintiff’s legs so that her body was in an ‘L’ shaped position while lying on her back. Her buttocks and genitalia were physically proximate to Duggan’s pelvis. Duggan then began pumping and pounding Plaintiff’s legs up and down and dancing with her legs and feet. Duggan continued to do this even after Plaintiff told CEO Duggan repeatedly, ‘Stop. It
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IANAL, but I believe this would be a gross misdemeanor in my state., punishable by up to a year in jail.
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Ok, so it was â" or is alleged to have been â" a sexual assault. Why would anyone call it sexually suggestive instead?
Don't worry, it's just a clickbait headline designed to troll you.
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In this case "sexually suggestive" is a way to skew it so that it doesn't sound so bad when a person is caught touching boobs of a woman who doesn't want him to touch them (all those chest bumps).
The answer as always is to keep work and leisure separate, act professionally and don't have fucking stupid "retreats", "teambuilding
Re:If there's one rule (Score:5, Insightful)
"Plaintiff was partly laying on one of the beds when Duggan entered the cabin and immediately picked up Plaintiff’s legs so that her body was in an ‘L’ shaped position while lying on her back. Her buttocks and genitalia were physically proximate to Duggan’s pelvis. Duggan then began pumping and pounding Plaintiff’s legs up and down and dancing with her legs and feet. Duggan continued to do this even after Plaintiff told CEO Duggan repeatedly, ‘Stop. It’s time to stop. I’m uncomfortable.’ Duggan ignored Plaintiff and continued to pump and pound her legs and removed her shoes. Plaintiff’s efforts to physically free herself were unsuccessful. Duggan bent Plaintiff’s legs closer to her head, drawing his pelvis closer to her buttocks and genitalia and continued to pound Plaintiff’s legs (and as a result, her buttocks) up and down. Duggan also lifted Plaintiff off the bed by her ankles and legs."
^ Obviously this is a perfectly innocent way of greeting someone. Who hasn't done it? Political correctness gone mad.
Re:If there's one rule (Score:4, Informative)
The person who arrived to save her by pulling the CEO off her was obviously a witness.
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From TFS: "Kim is suing over sexual harassment and discrimination, assault and battery, demanding a jury trial..."
It sounds like she doesn't want to quietly settle out of court and let the CEO buy his way out of public scrutiny of his actions. Good for her.
Re: If there's one rule (Score:1)
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I'm still trying to figure out why this is in civil court with no mention of criminal charges, and the mention of a witness only makes me wonder more. Given that the last I checked, the evidence was that the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by a small group of offenders, the odds are pretty good that if this really happened--he's a serial offender.
So, y'know, it's kind of important to press charges.
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I'm quite aware of that part and in fact was presuming the reader was not enough of an idiot to need reminding. However, sexual assault is one of the places where the person who gets to make the call on filing the initial charges is typically the victim and not the prosecutor. It won't even get to where you've got a prosecutor looking at the evidence if you don't do that. You also can proceed with the civil side of the case before the criminal side reaches court, assuming it ever will.
The bottom line here
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Criminal court is a lot harder for the victims. They will often be forced to testify or face almost certainly losing, and if they get on the stand the defence lawyer will of course try to destroy their reputation and make out that they were leading the attacker on etc. That lawyer will want to go through their sexual history, talk to ex-lovers, basically anything to make out they are promiscuous and were probably asking for it before changing their mind.
This is bad for both the accused and the alleged victi
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I'm stunned by how out of date your claims are--have you never heard of rape shield laws [wikipedia.org]? It probably doesn't quite matter anymore, given that I'd suspect that letting your lawyer bring up any bit of the alleged victim's reputation aside from things directly relevant to their credibility would get the jury pissed off with you...and, really, anything there that'd be worth that risk would probably have the prosecution not inclined to bother with the case unless it's part of a set.
But, I am glad to hear nobod
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Crimes are prosecuted by the state or federal government (state in this case). Anyone can bring a civil suit. It may be that the appropriate prosecutor declined to prosecute, for whatever reason, or a criminal prosecution may be slow in coming.
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Which would be mentioned as either the criminal charges being dropped or pending, respectively. Moreover, sexual assault is one of the list of charges where the victim gets to make the call on if they want to press charges in the first place--if the victim says no, it literally doesn't matter how good the case could have been, and the prosecutor will never see it.
Therefore, all kinds of states of those criminal charges are possible, including 'not existing at all.' However, if they exist, there's still a
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The prosecutor isn't going to go ahead if a critical witness is unwilling anyway. Lots of rapes and sexual assaults happen where the women would like to see criminal charges filed, but the prosecutor decides against it. It takes both the victim and the prosecutor to decide to testify.
Rape and sexual assault can be particularly hard crimes to prove in court.
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Since apparently you missed it the first time: The victim is the one who gets to decide if assault charges (sexual, whatever) are going to be filed. The prosecutor is unlikely to even know about the case if the victim say "Nope, not going to file charges." What the prosecutor gets to do is decide if the this case is worth taking to court, but once they're filed there will be record of them & sometimes what it ultimately takes is having a serial sexual assault case. That can make it easier to get t
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Heâ(TM)s said to have consumed alcohol aggressively, danced inappropriately with female co-workers and draped his arm over a female employee inappropriately. At one point, the CEO is said to have entered a cabin and while dancing, chest-bumped a female employee repeatedly until she fell down, causing Kim to leave for another cabin.
and
One of Plaintiffâ(TM)s co-workers intervened and pulled Plaintiff away from Duggan. Duggan then left the room.
Sounds like there were witnesses. So I guess the next stage of denial is to upgrade from "bitch trying to get paid" to "conspiracy of men-hating bitches trying to get paid", right?
Re: If there's one rule (Score:2)
how the hell is that sexual assault?
Pics? (Score:1, Insightful)
Pics please. Is she hot?
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Six beers.
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You're no fun anymore. What happened to you AC?
why is this on Slashdot? (Score:1, Interesting)
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If these folks running startups get reminders that they shouldn't be fucking at work then it's more chance for people to be employed on their merits instead of being "hot". There's always people here whining that women are taking their jobs and strangely they are the same ones that would be happier if things like this went unreported - counterproductive.
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That's your prediction of what's going to happen. I think that's the least likely outcome.
So all tech nerds need to be hit over the head repeatedly with the misdeeds of a small minority?
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Where is the hit on the head and where is it being repeated?
The alleged perpetrator is a CEO of a large startup and probably not a "tech nerd" at all let alone someone who can be assumed to be representative of us all.
This is no more an attack on "tech nerds" than the TV series "The Office" where the boss behaves badly.
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Link to the whining? I've seen butloads of whining about foreigners 'taking our jerbs', but women?
Competent women in tech are about as common as tits on a boar. The bitching would be about carrying the incompetent ones.
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Any of the long string of "Friday night fight" articles about women in IT that cropped up here once a week like clockwork until a few months back when the site editors appear to have decided Trump articles were better clickbait (not that I disagree). The whining posts tended to get modded up and down like yoyos.
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Was the whining about them being there or about them being incompetent?
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Trying to demonstrate that "tech startups are especially bad about sexual harassment" by giving anecdotes is fundamentally dishonest, even more so by giving anecdotes based on the claims of someone in a civil lawsuit.
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If I want to read the Journal of Critical Theory, I'll subscribe to it. Such spurious reasoning has no place on a site catering to rational people.
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In this case, to the extent you think the narrative is false and this law suit is entirely without merit,