While my husband was still working for the competitor of the place he is now employed, he told me a story.
He was at an industry event. He noticed that one of the male partners of another adjusting company (where he now works) was holding up a female coworker. He said that she was so wasted she could barely stand. He told me that it was a horrible reflection on this company and that the male partner should have put this female employee in a cab and sent her home.
Fast forward to him now working at this company with the two male partners. My husband was hired to eventually take over from the one partner, who was holding up the incapacitated female staffer, when he retired.
My husband came home one night to tell me that the female employee, who he noticed at this industry event as extremely inebriated, had a lawsuit against his company. She was alleging that the night he witnessed her in this condition, she was raped by another employee. He shared details that were quite horrific. She never returned to work after that night.
He told me that the party had apparently started on the other partner’s boat that afternoon. I don’t recall how many people he said were on the boat or if they were all coworkers. The party moved from the boat to the place where my husband saw her walk in. Apparently after that event she was taken back to the boat and raped. The employee being accused of the rape denied it and said nothing happened between him and this coworker.
I had been on that boat with my husband and our 2 children shortly after he was hired. It had 2 bedrooms. I hated the way my husband acted that night and I was embarrassed by his behavior as a new employee and also in front of our children. He got so drunk he fell into the ocean while trying to get into a Zodiac to take us back to shore. I also had to pull the car over for him to throw up on our way back home. He became a totally different person on that boat and I thought if he was trying to impress his new “partner-to-be” he was doing a terrible job.
There was another couple who joined us on the boat at some point during that day. Months later, my husband would come home to tell me that the husband of that couple we met was waiting to hear if he was the father of some girl he had fooled around with who got pregnant. It was between him and another guy. It turned out to not be his but again, I remember feeling incredibly sad for the wife of this man and thinking who are these men that are now in my husband’s life?
My husband relayed several other boat stories in the year and a half before I found out about his own affair with a coworker. He shared many sexual stories about the partner who is the boat owner. He shared how his partner would leave topless photos of his wife on his camera and then give the memory card to their secretary to sort through and see them all. My husband described “swinging” parties on the boat and I remember telling him that he better make sure he is never on that boat without me.
My husband came home again to tell me that the employee who was being accused of the rape had initially given a statement denying the entire event. He initially said that nothing happened between him and this female coworker. Now, my husband reported, he changed his statement. He said that his version was now that this female employee performed oral sex on him and that was all that happened. My husband told me that no one at the office believed him and that it did not look good that he now changed his story. My husband told me that this employee was a husband with a baby on the way.
As far as the female employee, my husband said that she was apparently “mentally unstable” and that she had slept with the partner who owned the boat at one point while she was married. This was going to be their defense.
With the current ‘#Me too Movement’ this seems so similar to many other stories. There was no protection of the female employee. She was left in a vulnerable condition and environment and placed in that position during a work event. The male employee was believed and protected and the female employee was left having to find other employment. She was being shamed and blamed in her office by her bosses. She had worked there a long time and it makes no sense that she would just abandon her job with no other job to go to and not give proper notice. Something obviously happened.
It is alleged that a date rape drug was used and she only had one drink. She apparently doesn’t even recall being at the event where my husband saw her.
Apparently, the partner who owns the boat and who had a sexual relationship with this subordinate female, had a clause in his contract that says if he sleeps with any other employees in their office he loses his company shares. If this is true, there was a very serious known problem with the work environment he created.
This is the environment my husband now works. I remember, and I think I have blogged about this before, my husband coming home and saying, “I don’t know he gets away with talking to women like he does.” It was like my husband admired it. Well, he gets away with it because men, like my husband, witness this and instead of calling him on it praise him and envy him for it and then emulate it.
Obviously Janice Andrews, who contributes to the environment by sleeping with married men and cheating on her husband, knew about the rape. When I told her husband about his wife having an affair with my husband the first thing he said to me was, “Is he the guy who raped (name of victim)?” Who knows, maybe Janice herself is a victim of the environment where she works. Maybe she was afraid she would lose her job if she didn’t participate with my husband.
Mehgan McCain on The View today said it best, “Any man who is screwing around at work anymore you better start running because this isn’t a good time for you.”