Latest news with #GretchenCarlson
Forbes
6 days ago
- Politics
- Forbes
The Epstein Files Scandal, #MeToo Progress And The Demand For Accountability
If there is one thing that Americans can agree on right now, it's that they want the full Epstein files released. Roughly 86% of Americans support releasing all files from the Epstein case, according to a Washington Post survey. An Economist/YouGov poll mirrored those results, with 79% of Americans—including 85% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans—saying they believe that the government should release all documents it has about the Jeffrey Epstein case. The continued bipartisan public outrage over the Epstein files is reflective of a larger cultural change where survivors are believed, and the collective is demanding transparency and accountability from those in power rather than pushing for survivors to come forward to reveal who is on the list. 'The American public is smarter than we think, because they are not demanding to hear from the survivors; they believe them. Instead they want accountability for these male predators and female predators,' says Gretchen Carlson, who nearly a decade ago filed a lawsuit against Fox News then-chairman CEO Roger Ailes, the most powerful man in media at the time, and co-founded Lift Our Voices (LOV), an organization with the mission to change toxic workplace cultures. 'This is a massive step forward in this fight, because it shows culture itself has changed to put the onus on people in power.' Interest in the Epstein files is still strong even with Congress away for a monthlong break. The House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for Democratic and Republican politicians as well as FBI directors, ordering the Department of Justice to hand over Epstein-related records by August 19. 'I don't care if you're MAGA. I don't care if you're a democratic socialist. I don't care if you're anything in between. Over 80% of Americans want names revealed and predators held accountable…There's nothing else in our hyper-partisan world with such broad consensus,' says Julie Roginsky, the other co-founder of LOV, who also filed a lawsuit for sexual harassment and retaliation against the Fox News Channel roughly 10 months after Carlson. 'People are no longer questioning the background of survivors and now are believing and trusting them. What a sea change from before we came forward, from before the #MeToo movement began.' The Legacy of MeToo and the Epstein Files Carlson and Roginsky were two of the most early and most prominent voices in the #MeToo movement, which hit cultural prominence in 2017 and sparked a societal reckoning as millions of women's voices about the sexual violence they'd experienced put a spotlight on gender inequities and power dynamics. The movement continues to push to make broader systemic changes to protect survivors in the workplace through law and policy updates, as well as continuing to change our culture at large. 'If I've learned nothing else over these last years [since #Metoo started] , it is that fixing laws and policies alone won't be enough, and that taking on our culture is going to have to happen alongside it in terms of how it is that people see and understand the issues of gender-based violence in this country,' Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center and a co-founder of the TIME'S UP Legal Defense Fund, told me in a previous Forbes story. 'It will require all of us talking about things that people don't want to talk about. It's going to require continuing generation after generation to ensure that this is an issue that stays front and center, rather than in the shadows.' The Cost of Courage: Speaking Out Against Power While some people may argue that #MeToo is dead or is not needed anymore, the truth is that change with any social movement is slow, nonlinear, and doesn't happen all at once. The earliest days of the #MeToo movement showed survivors there is power in the collective and courage is contagious, enabling survivors to feel like they had greater support to speak out, even if the odds seemed impossible. The Epstein files scandal shows that, unlike in the past, society is no longer putting the onus on survivors to come forward and relive their trauma or risk retaliation (more than 70% of workers who report abuse are retaliated against in some way—whether they are fired, demoted, given fewer hours on their schedule, denied a promotion, or threatened with legal action). Rather, there is a rising demand for accountability from those in power to tell the truth—regardless of their status. Carlson recounts the obstacles she herself faced when filing her sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes. 'My lawyer said, 'They will do everything to malign you. They will do everything to bury you. They will do everything to kill you.' While that did happen in the beginning, the remarkable thing that also happened was that the Murdoch sons decided to open an investigation, which I could have never, ever expected. As a result, other Fox women came forward. I started hearing from so many other women in our country and around the world, and I realized there were two epidemics. Sexual misconduct was still an epidemic, and the second epidemic was silencing people when they had the courage to come forward.' So Carlson made it her mission to get to work and change this. Roginsky too experienced tremendous blow back from speaking out against sexual harassment and violence in the workplace, and the silencing power of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) during her consultancy for a gubernatorial campaign. When she attempted to advocate for campaign staff who reported toxic and abusive behavior, she was fired—and then swiftly reminded by the governor's lawyer that she was bound by an NDA so broad she couldn't even share the existence of the agreement. 'It was truly the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life professionally,' she says. 'At that point I called Gretchen and I said, 'You're doing so much good work with advocacy. I want to help you. I want to get rid of NDAs. I don't want anybody to ever go through what I have gone through. And the only reason I'm able to tell you this right now is that eventually there was so much public scandal over this issue that I finally got released from my NDA.' Since founding their non-profit LOV in 2019, the pair has done a tremendous amount of advocacy around forced arbitration and NDAs in an effort to eliminate silencing mechanisms in the workplace. They successfully passed the bipartisan Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA) and the Speak Out Act, which eradicates predispute non-disclosure agreements for sexual assault and harassment—two of the biggest labor law changes in the last 100 years. 'When we passed the Speak Out Act… I made sure it included witnesses, so both survivors and those who could help them could support each other,' says Roginsky. In addition, they've championed many state-level laws that prevent workers from disclosing toxic workplace experiences and continue to fight for fair and just treatment for all protected classes in the workplace. Yet changing laws is only part of the equation; it's also key to raise awareness and transform workplace culture. 'Education is everything. Most people don't realize when they're signing away their voice on day one of a job—it's hidden in onboarding paperwork,' said Roginsky. 'Over 80% of American workers are bound by forced arbitration, and over a third by NDAs.' Their advice? Refuse to sign silencing documents. Employers should 'stop automatically protecting predators and silencing victims,' said Carlson. Instead, companies should commit to transparency and fair investigations. A Message to Survivors To those survivors watching new details of the Epstein scandal unfold, such as whether or not Ghislaine Maxwell will testify, and waiting for justice, Carlson offers hope. 'There is an army of people who have your back. We've educated America, and they are supporting you, even if you don't know them. When I leapt without a safety net, I found a safety net there. We are that safety net for each other now.'
The Guardian
04-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The #MeToo campaign leader using the Epstein scandal to champion victims: ‘The survivors are the heroes'
The swirling political drama around the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his jailed accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and the mixed verdicts in recent Harvey Weinstein and Sean 'Diddy' Combs trials, have raised questions around the health of the #MeToo social movement and its emphasis on raising awareness about sexual harassment. There are fears of a backlash to the testimonies and experiences of victims and survivors of sexual violence and a lessening of the will to hold perpetrators to account. But one person determined to keep survivors of sexual violence firmly at the forefront of public debate around the Epstein saga is the former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who received a $20m settlement from 21st Century Fox in 2016 to resolve a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. 'The survivors are the heroes in this [Epstein] case because there would be no case without them and their courage and bravery in speaking up,' Carlson told the Guardian last week. Carlson, together with Julie Roginsky, who settled with Fox over claims she was denied a promotion after she refused Ailes, is now heading a pressure group, Lift Our Voices. The group aims to overturn legally binding non-disclosure agreements that prevent employees from speaking out on their experiences in the workplace, as neither Carlson nor Roginsky were able to do under settlement-attached NDAs they too signed. 'We aim to continue lifting [survivors] up and letting them know that we are here to support them,' Carlson said. It's a mission that has become particularly acute in recent days as an effort by Maxwell to win a sentence commutation or sentence reduction on her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking charges. Remarkable in the ongoing controversy is the absence of young women who made allegations against Maxwell and Epstein and were in most instances paid out under an Epstein estate victims' compensation fund. The settlements, which amount to $121m to about 150 survivors, came with a commitment not to pursue future legal claims but permitted them to participate in criminal investigations and to share their stories publicly. Carlson and Roginsky acknowledge that, even as powerful professionals, adult women when they came forward, the balance of power was tipped in favor of the man they were accusing. Almost a decade later, there is little expectation that Epstein-Maxwell survivors will want to expose themselves while a political storm rages. On Thursday, the family of Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, called on Donald Trump to resist pardoning Maxwell, calling her a 'monster who deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life'. Still, Roginsky says, the accounts of women used to be swept under the rug. 'The very fact that these survivors are believed is already a massive development in the way our culture treats these kinds of cases and reports.' Adds Carlson: 'Nobody is saying we don't believe these people, and we have to see their faces and hear their voices to believe them, or to prove this story actually existed, and that is a huge step forward as well as a victory for the movement. 'People want information about this [Epstein-Maxwell] story but they're not demanding that survivors come forward in order for it to be true,' Carlson adds. Behind the scenes Lift our Voices has championed federal legislation to make it easier for claimants to come forward. In 2022, Congress passed the Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA), which gave employees the right to take their claims to court instead of secret arbitration. Another federal law, known as the Speak Out Act, means claimants are no longer bound by a pre-dispute NDA or non-disparagement agreements if they have experienced sexual harassment or assault at work. But the jury verdicts in both the second Weinstein trial, brought after the movie mogul's first conviction on sexual assault charges was thrown on appeal and succeeded in one out of three charges, and the Combs case, in which prosecutors failed to prove racketeering but succeeded on two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, indicate that jurors, at least, are sending mixed signals to advocates for survivors of sexual violence. But Roginsky and Carlson are not deterred or deflated. 'Harvey Weinstein was found guilty and will be spending many more years in prison, so from that perspective it was a success,' says Roginsky. 'Sean Combs was also found guilty and will also be spending time in prison.' Carlson and Roginsky laud the testimony of Cassie Ventura, Combs's former girlfriend who, heavily pregnant, spent days on the stand walking jurors through her experience. 'She's been held up largely as a hero and an inspiration to many other women,' Roginsky says. 'So these are not setbacks, this is more evidence that the movement is not going away, moving forward, holding perpetrators accountable, and giving survivors space and respect to tell their stories,' she adds. Carlson points out that movements to change a culture are rarely a straight line of constant successes. 'But that doesn't mean there hasn't been significant change. We have to look at this globally and not in black-and-white,' she said. But as demands for more information on the Epstein-Maxwell sex-trafficking conspiracy mount, both Carlson and Roginsky are doubtful that this information should come from Maxwell or the victims of the conspiracy. 'We don't need Maxwell to tell the world what happened, especially a woman who is a known liar and somebody that I think we all understand will say whatever it takes to get out of prison even if that means protecting certain high-powered people who may not need to be protected,' says Roginsky. But fundamentally, adds Carlson, the will-she won't-she daily Maxwell show is a sideshow. 'This has nothing to do with the survivors. This is an abstraction for the Trump administration to be able to say look over here, not over there. 'It's preposterous that there would be any discussion over Maxwell getting any kind of a pardon,' she says. 'The fact that the president of the United States cannot say absolutely not to the most prolific child sex trafficker in a generation, besides Epstein, is a disgrace.' Trump told reporters last week that while he was allowed to issue a pardon or clemency to Maxwell 'it's something I have not thought about.' But the political consequences of that move, Carlson predicts, would be severe. She said: 'There would be an insurrection if that happens, and it wouldn't just be from the left or the center, it would also be from the right, because Maga is behind wanting more information, ironically. It's brought Maga, the middle and the Democrats together. The survivors should even be in the equation on this.'
The Guardian
04-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The #MeToo campaign leader using the Epstein scandal to champion victims: ‘The survivors are the heroes'
The swirling political drama around late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his jailed accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and the mixed verdicts in recent Harvey Weinstein and Sean Puffy Combs trials, have raised questions around the health of the #MeToo social movement and its emphasis on raising awareness about sexual harassment. There are fears of a backlash to the testimonies and experiences of victim and survivors of sexual violence and a lessening of the will to hold perpetrators to account. But one person determined to keep survivors of sexual violence firmly at the forefront of public debate around the Epstein saga is former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who received a $20m settlement from 21st Century Fox in 2016 to resolve a sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. 'The survivors are the heroes in this [Epstein] case because there would be no case without them and their courage and bravery in speaking up,' Carlson told the Guardian last week. Carlson, together with Julie Roginsky, who settled with Fox over claims she was denied a promotion after she refused Ailes, are now heading a pressure group, Lift Our Voices. The group aims to overturn legally binding non-disclosure agreements that prevent employees from speaking out on their experiences in the workplace, as neither Carlson nor Roginsky were able to do under settlement-attached NDAs they too signed. 'We aim to continue lifting [survivors] up and letting them know that we are here to support them,' Carlson said. It's a mission that has become particularly acute in recent days as an effort by Maxwell to win a sentence commutation or sentence reduction on her 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges. Remarkable in the ongoing controversy is the absence of young women who made allegations against Maxwell and Epstein and were in most instances paid out under an Epstein estate victims' compensation fund. The settlements, which amount to $121m to around 150 survivors, came with a release to not to pursue future legal claims but permitted them to participate in criminal investigations and to share their stories publicly. Carlson and Roginsky acknowledge that, even as powerful professional, adult women when they came forward, the balance of power was tipped in favor of the man they were accusing. Almost a decade later, there is little expectation that Epstein-Maxwell survivors will want to expose themselves while a political storm rages. On Thursday, the family of Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, called on Donald Trump to resist pardoning Maxwell, calling her a 'monster who deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life'. Still, Roginsky says, the accounts of women used to be swept under the rug. 'The very fact that these survivors are believed is already a massive development in the way our culture treats these kinds of cases and reports.' Adds Carlson: 'Nobody is saying we don't believe these people, and we have to see their faces and hear their voices to believe them, or to prove this story actually existed, and that is a huge step forward as well as a victory for the movement. 'People want information about this [Epstein-Maxwell] story but they're not demanding that survivors come forward in order for it to be true,' Carlson adds. Behind the scenes Lift our Voices has championed federal legislation to make it easier for claimants to come forward. In 2022, congress passed the Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA) which gave employees the right to take their claims to court instead of secret arbitration. Another federal law, known as the Speak Out Act, means claimants are no longer bound by a pre-dispute NDA or non-disparagement agreements if they have experienced sexual harassment or assault at work. But the jury verdicts in both the second Weinstein trial, brought after the movie moguls first conviction on sexual assault charges was thrown on appeal and succeeded in one out of three charges, and the Combs case, in which prosecutors failed to prove racketeering but succeeded on two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, indicate that jurors, at least, are sending mixed signals to advocates for survivors of sexual violence. But Roginsky and Carlson are not deterred or deflated. 'Harvey Weinstein was found guilty and will be spending many more years in prison, so from that perspective it was a success,' says Roginsky. 'Sean Combs was also found guilty and will also be spending time in prison.' Carlson and Roginsky laud the testimony of Cassie Ventura, Combs' former girlfriend who, heavily pregnant, spent days on the stand walking jurors through her experience. 'She's been held up largely as a hero and an inspiration to many other women,' Roginsky says. 'So these are not set backs, this is more evidence that the movement is not going away, moving forward, holding perpetrators accountable, and giving survivors space and respect to tell their stories,' she adds. Carlson points out that movements to change a culture are rarely a straight line of constant successes. 'But that doesn't mean there hasn't been significant change. We have to look at this globally and not in black-and-white,' she said. But as demands for more information on the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking conspiracy mount, both Carlson and Roginsky are doubtful that this information should come from Maxwell or the victims of the conspiracy. 'We don't need Maxwell to tell the world what happened, especially a woman who is a known liar and somebody that I think we all understand will say whatever it takes to get out of prison even if that means protecting certain high-powered people who may not need to be protected,' says Roginsky. But fundamentally, adds Carlson, the will-she won't-she daily Maxwell show is a sideshow. 'This has nothing to do with the survivors. This is an abstraction for the Trump administration to be able to say look over here, not over there. 'It's preposterous that there would be any discussion over Maxwell getting any kind of a pardon,' she says. 'The fact that the President of the United States cannot say absolutely not to the most prolific child sex trafficker in a generation, besides Epstein, is a disgrace.' Trump told reporters last week that while he was allowed to issue a pardon or clemency to Maxwell 'it's something I have not thought about.' But the political consequences of that move, Carlson predicts, would be severe. She said: 'There would be an insurrection if that happens, and it wouldn't just be from the left or the center, it would also be from the right, because Maga is behind wanting more information, ironically. It's brought Maga, the middle and the Democrats together. The survivors should even be in the equation on this.'
