Fox News and the network’s popular and long-running on-air personality Bill O’Reilly paid out approximately $13 million to settle multiple sexual harassment cases against O’Reilly, according to a New York Times report published over the weekend. In the aftermath of that report, shocking details of one of the cases emerged online from publicly available court documents, including details that were tape recorded by the plaintiff in the case.
Read those graphic details below to get a clearer picture of the allegations that O’Reilly, 67, has paid millions to put to rest. But readers should be warned: the details are explicit and may be offensive to some.
O’Reilly issued a statement responding to the Times article, which names five women who reportedly received legal cash settlements from O’Reilly or Fox News, his employer since O’Reilly’s nightly political talk show The O’Reilly Factor went on the air in 1996.
“Just like other prominent and controversial people. I’m vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity,” O’Reilly said in the statement .
“In my more than 20 years at Fox News Channel , no one has ever filed a complaint about me with the Human Resources Department, even on the anonymous hotline… I have put to rest any controversies to spare my children. The worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my employer, the Fox News Channel .”
Fox News founder and chief Roger Aisles has also been hit with multiple sexual harassment claims and resigned from his position atop the conservative cable news network last summer. While Aisles denies the allegations against him, another lawsuit was filed on Monday morning by a female former Fox News contributor, again charging Aisles with sexual harassment.
The graphic details and excerpts from a lawsuit filed in 2004 by former Fox News producer Andrea Mackris were published on Sunday by New York Magazine contributing writer Yashar Ali on his Twitter account. Click on this link to read the entire Twitter thread with more extensive excerpts from the lawsuit.
O’Reilly reportedly paid $9 million to settle the case. The details include the following allegations.
• In 2002, O’Reilly took Mackris, who was then 33 years old, out to dinner where he praised her work and offered her a raise. But in the course of the conversation, he stunned Mackris by advising her, with no prompting, that she should “use your vibrator to blow off steam.”
O’Reilly also offered the information that his own wife — from whom he divorced nine years later — used a vibrator, though he told Mackris, “She’d kill me if she knew I was telling you!” At the same dinner, O’Reilly claimed that he had given similar advice regarding use of a vibrator to another female Fox News employee and that he had personally “taught that woman how to masturbate,” according to the lawsuit.
4. After that unsolicited advice was offered at same dinner, O’Reilly went further suggesting that Makris use a vibrator to “blow off steam” pic.twitter.com/NxMzejZV9V
— Yashar (@yashar) April 3, 2017
• On a later occasion, in 2003, O’Reilly took Mackris and one of her female friends to dinner. At that dinner, he suggested that all go to a hotel for a menage a trois, saying that he would give the women sexual “lessons” enabling them to be prepare for when “a real man shows up in your lives.”
• O’Reilly repeatedly asked Mackris to engage in phone sex with him. Despite her repeated refusals, on August 2, 2004, O’Reilly phoned her during the nighttime anyway and proceeded to regale her with an unsolicited “vile and degrading monologue about sex.” During O’Reilly’s monologue, Mackris realized that O’Reilly “was masturbating as he spoke.”
“After he climaxed,” the lawsuit document text continued, “defendant O’Reilly said to (Mackris), ‘I appreciate the fun phone call. You can have fun tonight.’”
• But that was not the end of O’Reilly’s unsolicited and inappropriate phone calls to Mackris, according to the lawsuit. In another call, recorded by Mackris, O’Reilly told her that he was in the midst of viewing pornography as he spoke to her, and proceeded to heatedly relate an elaborate sexual fantasy he had about her, in which he said that wanted to bathe with her and wash her back with a “loofa,” which he later mistakenly referred to as a “falafel.”
Again, be cautioned, the following excerpt from the lawsuit contains explicit and potentially offensive details.
22. O’Reilly continued his lewd + unsolicited sexual rant. Makris reminded him she worked for him. O’Reilly said “you have to suspend that” pic.twitter.com/1vgUv4QwWP
— Yashar (@yashar) April 3, 2017
31. And here is Andrea Makris today. It was an incredible feat for her to take Bill O’Reilly AND Roger Ailes on in 2004.
END THREAD pic.twitter.com/AQ2q7CvYvu
— Yashar (@yashar) April 3, 2017
In a separate statement issued by Fox News, the cable network noted that O’Reilly “denies the merits of these claims, (but he) has resolved those he regarded as his personal responsibility. Mr. O’Reilly is fully committed to supporting our efforts to improve the environment for all our employees at Fox News .”
[Featured Image by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images]