Elon Musk SEX SCANDAL: Everything you need to know about allegation against Tesla CEO
Elon Musk's SpaceX allegedly paid $250,000 to one of the company's corporate flight attendants after she accused Musk of exposing himself to her and propositioning her for sex, claimed a report. The woman alleged that Musk rubbed her leg and offered her gifts in exchange for a massage. The woman has not been named.
The woman has accused Musk of making a move on her in 2016 during a massage on a flight to London. When she reported the incident to SpaceX, however, the company paid her $250,000 as part of a severance agreement.
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As a benefit for executives, SpaceX employs in-house massages. The flight attendant's supervisors reportedly encouraged her to take massage classes. According to a friend of the alleged victim, Musk requested her to come to his room and perform "a full body massage" back in 2016. When she arrived in Musk's room, she allegedly found him "completely naked except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body."
The declaration from the friend said that Musk then "exposed his genitals" and also touched the woman inappropriately. He then "offered to buy her a horse" if she would "do more", which she said referred to performing sex acts. The flight attendant reportedly rode horses as a hobby.
Declining Musk's offer, however, the woman continued the massage, but "he whipped out his penis," the friend claimed, adding that "it was erect." "And he started propositioning her, like he touched her thigh and told her he would buy her a horse. And he basically tried to bribe her to perform some sort of sexual favor," the friend said. The friend added that when they met shortly after the flight, she was visibly shaken and "really upset."
"She figured things could just go back to normal and she would pretend like nothing happened," the friend said of the attendant. "However, she started to feel as if she was receiving some sort of retaliation where her shifts were cut back, and she was starting to feel really stressed." The declaration said that she was "being pushed out and punished for refusing to prostitute herself," the Daily Mail reported.
In 2018, the alleged victim hired an employment lawyer to file the complaint. Her friend was then contacted to corroborate the claims. Musk, SpaceX and the attendant agreed to a severance payment of $250,000 before even making it to court in November 2018. The settlement included non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements that barred the woman from revealing any information regarding the settlement. It also prevented her from opening up about Musk and his business. Just months after Musk's settlement, these types of agreements were banned in California.
However, the flight attendant's friend claimed that she felt as though she was obliged to tell her story as a survivor of sexual assault. "I absolutely felt a responsibility to come forward with it, especially now," she reportedly said. "He is the richest man in the world. Someone with that level of power causing that kind of harm and then throwing some money at the situation, that's not accountability."
"There are predators all over the world. But when someone is particularly wealthy and powerful, they literally have systems that are like a machine working for them, to set them up to be able to do whatever they want," she added. "When you choose to remain silent, yeah, you do become a part of that system. You do become a part of that machine that allows someone like Elon Musk to continue to do the horrible things that he's done."
Musk has reacted to the allegation against him. Noting that this was the first time he has been accused of sexual assault, he said, "If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light." He added that there is a "lot more to this story", which, according to him, is "politically motivated hit piece." Both Tesla and SpaceX have faced allegations of sexual harassment as well as lawsuits.