Who is David Shane? Amber Heard’s new PR guru is mired in controversy
In a shocking turn of events, it has been found that Amber Heard’s new PR guru, whom she hired in April while getting ready to face Johnny Depp in a Virginia court, is an alleged sex abuser. David Shane is reportedly Heard’s spin doctor. The 36-year-old actress got him on-board for painting her ex-husband Depp as an alcohol-binging abuser who violated her during their relationship.
But Shane’s own reputation is not very clean, according to a report in Daily Mail. The news outlet has reported that he is infamous in PR circles and is notoriously called “Hurricane Shane.” A number of the 49-year-old’s ex-colleagues have claimed anonymously that probes were launched against him by HR departments at both Hewlett-Packard and Juniper after he was accused of sexual harassment. He eventually left HP and Juniper, in 2010 and 2012 respectively, where he was vice president of communications.
The report also claimed that Shane allegedly assaulted a former model named Hollie Doker after meeting her on a dating app called Raya. However, an attorney for David Shane reached out to MEAWW and dnied all the allegations. “David Shane adamantly denies Hollie Doker’s allegation, which dramatically conflicts with Ms. Doker’s original account that she posted over three years ago,” the statement said.
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“Hewlett-Packard were doing an investigation on him. There were certainly a lot of issues. There was great discomfort among the women around him. I don't think he was a good guy to be around if you were a woman,” an insider said. Another source, who used to work at Juniper, recalled an Hong Kong conference event that happened in 2011 where former Vice President Al Gore was in attendance. The source told Daily Mail: “He thought it was too heavily male, and so added some females into the mix. It was wildly inappropriate.” The source continued: “He thought there needed to be women there to sort of create a festive mood with all the guys in the room. It was kind of to give it a more club feeling. They were dressed nicely, but provocatively. There were several Australians, a couple of Brits. They were working the room for sure.”
The ex-employee also added that Shane “was just one of those people who I think didn't understand that consequences or rules applied to him sometimes. There were a lot of questionable things that he did that made people uncomfortable. [It was] inappropriate behavior with young members of the comms function. Comms teams are generally younger women.”
The second Juniper insider disclosed, “He would cozy up to, and try to separate from the pack, a very young, vulnerable, member of the external PR firm. The way he would go about it would be to really start complimenting the young hot chick on the account, then say 'Hey, can you do this special project for me?' Then the sidebar meetings, or phone calls, like, 'Hey, I need something really urgently can I call you?' Then it would devolve into behavior where he would push himself on the young people.”
“These were young women who are starting out fresh in their career, not knowing how to handle it. It was typical, textbook grooming, harassment, and taking advantage of younger people who might not know better or are afraid to speak out,” they added. And it is not just not a matter of allegations that follow him. It has been reported that Shane allegedly assaulted a former model named Hollie Doker after meeting her on a dating app called Raya. The duo went on dates twice and soon after the second date, the alleged abuse happened. The 32-year-old woman said, “He started getting really aggressive, like ‘come to my bedroom, let’s have sex.’ I’m like ‘no’. I even lied to him and told him I was on my period because I just felt so uncomfortable. He said ‘I took you on these amazing dates to these really great restaurants.’ Doker then added: “At that point he started getting super aggressive and he pushed my head down, towards that [his crotch]. I told him no and I got up. He got angry and was like ‘I’ll call you a f***ing Uber.’”
Apart from these allegations, Shane was also arrested twice for DUI — once in February 2010 and another time in September 2012. After his first arrest, he initially “claimed innocence, then took a plea deal and was given three years' probation and two days in the county jail, San Mateo County Superior Court records show,” DailyMail.com reported. However, Shane’s attorney Rebecca Kaufman has denied all these accusations and said, “It’s easy to get distracted by anonymous, false accusations, but the focus should be on the merits of the defamation case pending in Fairfax County, Virginia and the relevant facts presented at trial.”