Several women accuse Fox News CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment

More than a dozen women have stepped forward to accuse Fox News CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment in the days since a former host for the channel filed a related lawsuit against Ailes, according to New York magazine.

Gretchen Carlson, who hosted "The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson" until last month, alleged that Ailes subjected her to "severe and persistent" sexual harassment. She also claims that Ailes fired her in June in a retaliatory move after she rejected his sexual advances. Ailes has called Carlson's accusations "false."

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Since Carlson filed her suit, however, more than dozen women have contacted her lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, to describe similar instances of sexual harassment. Two of those women spoke on-the-record in an interview with New York and four of them spoke under a pseudonym.

Kellie Boyle recounted how a professional dinner between Ailes and her in 1989 quickly turned into an unwelcome sexual proposition. The former Republican National Committee field adviser met with Ailes to discuss her work with the GOP when he suggested she'd be successful if she slept with him:

He had a driver and a car, and after dinner he said, ‘Can I take you to your friend’s?’ So we get in the car and that’s when he said, ‘You know if you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys.’ I was so taken aback. I said, ‘Gosh I didn’t know that. How would that work?’ I was trying to kill time because I didn’t know if he was going to attack me. I was just talking until I could get out of the car. He said, ‘That’s the way it works,’ and he started naming other women he’s had.

Boyle, 54, said she refused Ailes' offer, but that doing so came at a professional cost. When she lost the contract she'd expected to land, a friend who worked for the Republican National Committee explained why: "Word went out you weren’t to be hired."

Marsha Callahan, a former model who auditioned in the late 1960s for a daytime talk show Ailes produced, told New York she too lost a professional opportunity upon declining Ailes' advances:

So I go into his office and right away he says, ‘Sit on the sofa and lift your skirt up.’ I had to do these different poses. And then, I recall very clearly, he said he’d put me on the show but I needed to go to bed with him. I was a really shy girl, but I was a little cheeky so I said, ‘Oh yeah, you and who else?’ And he said, ‘Only me and a few of my select friends.’

Barry Asen, outside counsel for Ailes, denied the new accusations.

"It has become obvious that Ms. Carlson and her lawyer are desperately attempting to litigate this in the press because they have no legal case to argue," Asen said in a statement. "The latest allegations, all 30 to 50 years old, are false." 

It's unclear whether any of the women who've since contacted Carlson's lawyer will file their own lawsuit. The statute of limitations in New York, where Fox News has its headquarters, requires in most cases that victims of sexual harassment file a complaint with state officials within three years of the last incident.

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Carlson's lawsuit contains several instances of alleged sexual harassment, including comments Ailes' made about her legs, outfits and his own sexual history. Carlson said that when she tried to address Alies' "discriminatory" and "retaliatory" behavior, he responded that a sexual relationship would have remedied the problem.

"I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better,” Ailes said in September 2015, according to Carlson.

Ailes' lawyers have filed a motion to have Carlson's claims heard in arbitration, which would prevent her team from calling witnesses into court, according to New York.  

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