Elon Musk Pays $250K to SpaceX Stewardess Who Accused Him of Proposing Sex to Her in Text Massage
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace company, had to compensate one of its stewardesses with $250,000 as part of an out-of-court settlement for a lawsuit for sexual misconduct by the same tycoon in 2016, on a flight to London.
According to Business Insider, the assistant was part of the crew of a corporate flight where Musk moved. In her lawsuit, the assistant accused Musk of exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.
The incident has a statement signed by a friend of the assistant that supports the accusation against Musk. In addition there are statements and other documents, such as e-mails. The statement indicates that the assistant took a workshop as a masseuse, which she combined with her job as a flight attendant and that during one of these massages, in a private cabin in Musk’s Gulfstream G650ER, where the tycoon tried to go overboard.
The flight attendant confided in a friend that Musk asked her to come to his room during a flight in late 2016 “for a full-body massage.” When she arrived, she discovered that Musk “was completely naked except for a sheet that covered the lower half of his body.” She added that during the massage, the tycoon “exposed her genitals” and then “touched her and offered to buy her a horse if she ‘does more,’ meaning continue to engage in sexual acts.”
She declined the proposal. “She will not perform sexual favors in exchange for money or gifts,” the stewardess’s friend replied.
According to the publication, Musk’s official response on the case was: “If I were inclined to get involved in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it has come to light and been successful with political motivations.”
Punishment for denying the requested service
After the incident, the stewardess assures that the work began to run out and “after he exhibited himself, touched her without permission and offered to pay her for sex, she was full of anxiety,” added the friend and “began to feel that she was getting some kind of retaliation for her shifts being cut and she started to feel really stressed.
Finally, she pointed out that “she was being fired and punished for refusing to prostitute herself.”
In 2018, after becoming convinced that her refusal had caused her to be relegated from her job, the victim hired a California employment attorney and filed a complaint with the company’s human resources department, citing the episode. The lawyers then asked him to prepare the statement corroborating the claims.
Without going to court, the assistant negotiated with a mediator and Musk himself to sign a compensation agreement for $250,000 in November 2018 in exchange for the promise not to sue for the claims.
The agreement also included restrictive non-disclosure clauses that prohibited the aide from discussing severance pay or disclosing any information of any kind about Musk and his businesses, including SpaceX and Tesla.
However, the friend of the alleged victim assured that she felt the obligation to share the accusation against Musk, taking advantage of the fact that she did not sign any confidentiality clause.