Elon Musk was accused of sexual harassment against a flight attendant. He commented on this
A new scandal is breaking out around billionaire Elon Musk. The Insider publication reported that his company SpaceX in 2018 paid 250 thousand dollars to one flight attendant who accused the businessman of sexual harassment for her silence.
The victim claimed that the billionaire showed her his penis on board a private plane, stroked her thigh without her consent, asked her to give him an erotic massage and promised to buy a horse for it (the stewardess was fond of horse riding). After she reported the incident to SpaceX, Musk's company paid her $250,000 in compensation. The details were shared with the publication by a friend of the flight attendant, who was aware of the situation.
The flight attendant worked on a contract basis in a fleet of private SpaceX aircraft. According to the documents that were at the disposal of the publication, she confessed to a friend that after she got a job as a flight attendant, she was offered to get a massage therapist license so that she could do a massage mask. During one of these massage sessions on board the Gulfstream G650ER on the way to London in late 2016, as she told a friend, Musk made her such an obscene proposal.
After Insider contacted Musk for comment, the businessman sent an email asking for more time to respond and said that "this story is much deeper."
If I was prone to sexual harassment, it would hardly be the first time in my entire 30-year career that this would become known,
— Musk wrote in the end, calling this story "politically motivated."
The publication made a repeated request to comment on the charges, but the billionaire did not respond to it.
SpaceX Vice President of Legal Affairs Christopher Kardachi also said that he "is not going to comment on any settlement agreements."
The Insider article appeared after Musk tweeted that he was disappointed in the actions of the Democrats and from now on he will vote for the Republicans. In the post, the billionaire also noted that a discrediting campaign could now begin against him.
However, Insider investigation department employee John Cook in his Twitter* hinted that Musk published the message just after the publication requested his comments. The journalist reported that the request was sent at about 9 a.m. on May 18, and Twitter users* immediately noticed that Musk's messages about politically motivated attacks on him appeared that afternoon.
Insider journalists managed to talk to a friend of the flight attendant, who described in detail what happened on board. The stewardess herself declined to comment on this story. The identities of both persons are known to the publication, but they were kept anonymous for security reasons.
According to a friend of the flight attendant, the founder of Tesla asked her to come to his salon "for a full body massage." When she went in, she found that Musk "was completely naked, except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body."
A friend of the flight attendant also reported that she felt "shocked" and "didn't know what to do." Soon the stewardess began to feel that the attitude towards her in the company had changed, and there was less work.
Before the incident, she considered Mr. Musk to be a person to look up to. But after he offered to pay her for sex, she started to worry. She assumed that everything would come back to normal, and she would pretend that nothing had happened. Nevertheless, she began to feel as if she was being revenged: her shifts were shortened and she began to feel very stressed.
In the end, the statement says, the flight attendant felt that "she was survived and punished for refusing to engage in prostitution."
In 2018, convinced that her refusal to accept Musk's offer reduced her opportunities at SpaceX, the employee hired a California labor lawyer and sent a complaint to the company's human resources department with a detailed description of this episode. Around the same time, the law firm contacted her friend and asked her to prepare a declaration confirming the claims. The case never reached court or arbitration.
In November 2018, Musk, SpaceX and the flight attendant entered into an agreement under which she received compensation in the amount of $ 250,000 in exchange for a promise not to sue. The agreement also included a non-disclosure agreement that prohibits anyone from ever discussing compensation or disclosing any information about Musk and his businesses, including SpaceX and Tesla.
The Insider interlocutor said that she decided to report the incident without consulting her friend, because, having also experienced sexual violence, she felt obliged to share what she was told about the Mask. Unlike the flight attendant, her friend is not bound by any non-disclosure agreement.
When you decide to remain silent, you become part of this system. You really become part of this system that allows someone like Elon Musk to continue doing the terrible things he did,
— she said.
At the moment, this is the first and only accusation of sexual harassment against Musk personally. But in 2021, four women who worked at SpaceX spoke about the sexual harassment they said they had experienced at the company.
The billionaire is now in the process of concluding a deal to buy Twitter. His decision to purchase the platform became known at the end of April, but then Musk slowed down the purchase, saying that he first wanted to get reliable data on the number of fake accounts in the social network.
In April of this year, Musk became the richest man in the world according to Forbes. His fortune was estimated at $ 219 billion.
*Twitter is blocked in Russia
