1/Many years ago I worked on a legal case that was about to go to trial. I joined the plaintiff's research team late & had to read through thousands of pages of discovery in a very short period of time.
2/Our client had complained to his employer of discrimination & shortly after he made the complaint, HR called him in & said that an assistant had come forward to complain that he had tried to date rape her after a holiday party.
3/We were confident that we had enough evidence to prove that this was a false accusation, that the incident had been consensual. The strongest piece of evidence was that the employer did not fire him but sent him to an "executive coach" (?) as his punishment.
4/But of course we were concerned about how this allegation would look to a jury & it was important that we did a thorough check of all the discovery & information that was out there. This was my primary job.
5/So imagine my shock & surprise when I found amongst the thousands & thousands of documents a reference to another allegation that involved our client & a date rape of another assistant, who no longer worked for the employer we were bringing the lawsuit against.
6/I had no other choice than to find this employee & ask her about these allegations involving herself & our client. I was scared to death about calling her. I didn't want to be bringing up an awful incident that may have occurred in her past, at the hands of our client.
7/But we knew we couldn't move forward with preparing for trial without knowing everything we could about these serious allegations. So the lawyers helped me write out a script on what to say when I contacted her and my hands shook as I dialed her phone number.
8/She answered my call and my heart dropped. I had never been so scared to have a conversation with a complete stranger in my life. I started reading through the prepared script, introducing myself & that I was on a legal team that was representing our client.
9/Did she know our client? She said yes. Had she ever worked with him? She said yes. Had she ever spent time with him outside of work? She said yes. Had she hung out with him after a holiday party several years before? She then got quiet and finally said yes.
10/Had she ever slept at his house? She said yes. Had she ever slept on his couch? She then nervously laughed. No, she said. Not the couch but the floor. Her laughter made me relax as I asked her the toughest question. Had he ever been inappropriate or sexually assaulted her?
11/Her answer was swift & firm: No, absolutely not. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I then asked if she had ever heard of our client ever acting inappropriately with other colleagues. She said no. She saw his interactions with others as always respectful & helpful.
12/And then she said something that made my heart drop & hands shake all over again. She said that these questions were quite familiar, that this call reminded her of another call she had gotten shortly after she had quit working for this same employer.
13/The call had come from someone in HR and she had asked her pretty much the same questions about the same individual, except this woman from HR had been much PUSHIER than me. Pushier? What do you mean, I asked.
14/She then told me that HR had tried to COERCE her to say she had been sexually assaulted by our client. And she had refused. We were able to piece together the timeframe of when she had been contacted by HR & that it was shortly after our client had made his complaint to HR.
15/This woman - who will always be one of my biggest heroes - agreed to submit a witness affidavit explaining these events, the phone call from HR, the coercion, and the fact that our client had always acted with respect.
16/We submitted this affidavit to the defense & the court. The judge ultimately ruled to exclude it - along with all other allegations that were made by the employer involving allegations of sexual assault against our client.
17/The employer being sued, who had someone in their HR department try & coerce at least two women to step forward and make false allegations of sexual assault against our client, was a law firm. A very prominent, politically- connected, "Big Law", white-shoe law firm.
18/THIS was the lengths they were willing to go to destroy our client's claim that he was treated unfairly & unlawfully by them.
Remember that everything is NOT as it seems. Powerful people will go as far as they can to protect other powerful people - at the expense of others.
Remember that everything is NOT as it seems. Powerful people will go as far as they can to protect other powerful people - at the expense of others.
19/This is why getting the facts - all sides of the story as much as possible - are PARAMOUNT. I think about this woman - a complete stranger that I had to call many years ago - often. She didn't have to be truthful. But she was. Twice.
As long as honest and decent people still exist, the TRUTH will eventually come out. Maybe not as fast as we would like, but actually it always comes out. /END
*eventually not actually. 🤗
