According to a report from Insider, a former SpaceX flight attendant was paid $250,000 as part of a severance agreement after a sexual misconduct allegation was brought forth against Elon Musk in 2016.
According to a declaration signed by a friend of the accuser, Musk allegedly exposed his erect penis to the unidentified flight attendant and rubbed her leg without consent, Insider reports. Musk was also accused of offering to purchase a horse for the flight attendant if she agreed to giving him an erotic massage.
The friend said the flight attendant was encouraged by her superiors to get professional massage training with her own money. SpaceX has allegedly been known to provide an in-house massage therapist for executives. “They encouraged her to get licensed as a masseuse, but on her own time, on her own dime,” the friend said. “They implied that she would get to fly more often if she were to do this because she’d be able to give Elon proper massages.”
While aboard his Gulfstream G650ER on a flight to London, Musk asked the flight attendant to go to his room “for a full body massage.” When she got to his room, he was “completely naked except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body.” As she gave him the massage, Elon allegedly “exposed his genitals” and then “touched her and offered to buy her a horse if she would ‘do more,’ referring to the performance of sex acts,” but she declined.
“He whipped out his penis, it was erect,” the friend said of the alleged incident. “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 flight attendant, who discussed the incident with her friend after the London trip while the two were on a hike, allegedly started to see her shifts getting reduced. While she figured she could just move on as if nothing happened, she felt like there had been “some sort of retaliation” towards her for refusing Musk’s advances.
In 2018, the attendant hired a California employment lawyer and detailed what happened to her in a complaint to SpaceX’s human resources department. Her friend was also contacted to prepare a declaration supporting her allegations.
Musk attended a session with a mediator who addressed the complaint, and by Nov. 2018, a $250,000 payment was included in her severance agreement, along with restrictive non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses that disallow her from speaking about the incident, payout, and anything involving SpaceX and Musk.
Insider reached out via email to Musk, who requested more time to respond to the allegation, claiming there was “a lot more to this story.”
“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 wrote, calling the story a “politically motivated hit piece.” It appears the cryptic tweet posted by Elon Wednesday might have been in response to the imminent arrival of the Insider report.
Musk seemingly addressed the report a few hours after it was released, writing, “The attacks against me should be viewed through a political lens – this is their standard (despicable) playbook – but nothing will deter me from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech.”
“I’m not going to comment on any settlement agreements,” SpaceX vice president of legal Christopher Cardaci said when asked to comment by Insider.
