This is just horrible! Laurie Luhn, 56, claims she experienced nearly 20 years of sexual abuse from Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, 76, starting when she was just an impressionable 28-year-old working for George H.W. Bush‘s presidential campaign. Roger allegedly ensured that Laurie would stay quiet about the abysmal behavior by blackmailing her, she revealed in a heartbreaking 20/20 interview on November 18.
The alleged blackmail occurred one night in 1991, when Roger reportedly invited Laurie to his hotel room, and began snapping photos and taking videos of her in lingerie, performing sex acts. “He always let me know he was in control, and it was scary,” Laurie said. “It was like the minute it happened I knew that I’d been blackmailed because he did take photographs of me. He would say, ‘This is just my little insurance policy. And I’m just going to put it in a safe deposit box just to make sure you stay loyal.’”
That’s sickening. Laurie told Elizabeth Vargas on 20/20 that she eventually suffered a “mental breakdown” from the stress of her situation. She finally told the network about the alleged abuse in 2011, and was offered a $3 million separation agreement, which she took. Though Roger allegedly has blackmail fodder, and she signed an “extensive nondisclosure provision” during her settlement, she still wanted to speak out when she saw other women coming forward about alleged abuse.
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“I went through such hell for so many years. I finally felt safe when I saw that so many women were speaking up,” she said. Roger has denied Laurie’s claims.
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