Fox News Faces New Lawsuit Over Roger Ailes Sex Abuse Accusations

NEW YORK CITY — A former Fox News employee leveled a scorched-earth lawsuit against the network that accuses its late CEO Roger Ailes of keeping her in a "nightmare" of sexual abuse and blackmail.

The complaint filed Wednesday by Laura Luhn, who served as the network's booking director, strikes a blistering note from the start and doesn't relent for 30 pages.

"Roger Ailes used his position as the head of Fox News to trap Laura W. Luhn in a decades-long cycle of sexual abuse," the complaint begins.

"To ensure her compliance and public silence, Ailes photographed and videotaped Luhn in compromising positions—blackmail material that he explicitly described as his 'insurance policy'—and made clear to Luhn that any attempt to speak out or stop the abuse would result in severe personal humiliation and career ruin."

FOX News Media responded in a short statement to Patch.

“This matter was settled years ago, dismissed in subsequent litigation, and is meritless," the statement reads.

Ailes died in 2017, just shy of a year after he resigned from Fox News after a slew of sexual harassment accusations from women employees, including Megyn Kelly.

Luhn had previously gone public with many of the accusations in the lawsuit.

But the recent passage of New York's Adult Survivors Act gave Luhn a new legal avenue. The law creates a one-year window for sexual assault victims to sue their abusers, regardless of when the incidents happened.

The lawsuit names Fox News, the now-defunct 21st Century Fox and Bill Shine, a powerful former executive at the network, as defendants.

Shine, who also served as former President Donald Trump's White House deputy chief of staff, knew of and enabled Ailes' abuse, the complaint argues.

Luhn had first been abused by Ailes in a 1991 encounter that he videotaped and referred to as his "insurance," the lawsuit states.

"From this moment on, Luhn believed that she had no choice but to do as Ailes commanded her, or risk losing her safety, her career, her reputation, and her personal relationships," the complaint states. "Luhn knew she was trapped."

The abuse continued when Ailes recruited Luhn to the then-fledgling network in 1996 and amped up over decades, leading to Luhn's mental breakdown, according to the lawsuit.

"During the breakdown—of which Fox News was well aware—Ailes’s hatchet man, Defendant Shine, took it upon himself to control Luhn’s personal life, manage her medical care, and ensure her public silence about the sexual abuse," the complaint states.

Shine and other Fox executives did nothing as Ailes and now-former network stars such as Bill O'Reilly abused women, the complaint argues.

Some abused women at Fox were subjected to public smear campaigns, including one against an O'Reilly accuser that Luhn had a "front-row seat" to, the lawsuit states.

"In private conversations with Luhn, Ailes explicitly reinforced the message that this public campaign was designed to convey to Luhn and other would-be accusers: come forward at your own peril," the complaint states.

Read the full complaint here.