Elon Musk has denied claims in a news report that he sexually harassed a flight attendant on a private jet in 2016, calling the accusations \u201cutterly untrue\u201d.<\/p>\n
SpaceX, the rocket company founded by\u00a0Musk, paid the female attendant $250,000 (\u00a3200,000) in a severance settlement after a sexual misconduct claim against the world\u2019s richest person, according to the news website Business Insider.<\/p>\n
The attendant was a cabin crew member who was contracted to work for\u00a0SpaceX\u2019s\u00a0corporate jet fleet. She accused Musk of exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent and offered to buy her a horse if she performed an erotic massage, according to interviews and documents obtained by Business Insider.<\/p>\n
Musk, who is worth $212bn and is also CEO of the electric carmaker Tesla, told his 94.1 million\u00a0Twitter\u00a0followers that the allegations were \u201cutterly untrue\u201d. The Guardian has not been able to verify the Business Insider account. SpaceX has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n
Tesla shares dropped 6% Friday after news of the allegations.<\/p>\n The alleged incident took place in 2016 and the settlement was agreed in 2018. According to a declaration prepared in support of the claim, the attendant said that after taking the job she was encouraged to train as a masseuse so she could give Musk massages. It was during one of those massages, onboard Musk\u2019s Gulfstream jet, that she was propositioned by the\u00a0SpaceX\u00a0chief executive.<\/p>\n The attendant, who Insider does not name, told her friend that she was asked to go to Musk\u2019s cabin during a flight to London to give a \u201cfull body massage\u201d. Upon entering the room, she found Musk was \u201ccompletely naked except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body\u201d. The declaration says that during the massage Musk \u201cexposed his genitals\u201d and \u201ctouched her and offered to buy her a horse if she would \u2018do more\u2019, referring to the performance of sex acts\u201d. The attendant, a horse rider, declined and continued with the massage without any sexual activity.<\/p>\n In an interview with Business Insider about the allegations, the attendant\u2019s friend said Musk\u2019s penis was erect when he propositioned her.<\/p>\n According to the declaration, after the incident the attendant felt she was being marginalised in her job. She felt \u201cshe was being pushed out and punished for refusing to prostitute herself\u201d, says the declaration.<\/p>\n The attendant hired a lawyer in 2018 and sent the allegations to SpaceX\u2019s HR department. The complaint was resolved after a session with a mediator attended by Musk, according to Insider. In November of that year, Musk, SpaceX and the attendant entered into a severance agreement that involved a $250,000 payment in exchange for a pledge not to sue over the claims.<\/p>\n Responding to Insider\u2019s story, Musk told the news site that there was \u201ca lot more to this story\u201d. He wrote: \u201cIf 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,\u201d adding that the story was a \u201cpolitically motivated hit piece\u201d.<\/p>\n Without referring directly to the article, Musk tweeted on Friday that attacks against him should be \u201cviewed through a political lens\u201d and that he would continue to fight for \u201cyour right to free speech\u201d.<\/p>\n Musk has agreed to buy Twitter, the social media company with 229 million users, for $44bn but\u00a0has said the deal is \u201con hold\u201d\u00a0until he receives further details of the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elon Musk has denied claims in a news report that he sexually harassed a flight attendant on a private jet in 2016, calling the accusations \u201cutterly untrue\u201d. SpaceX, the rocket company founded by\u00a0Musk, paid the female attendant $250,000 (\u00a3200,000) in a severance settlement after a sexual misconduct claim against the world\u2019s richest person, according to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,11264,11394,11381,10391,9478,4119,7298,12210,11355,10649,11493,7547,10776,3684,7259,8999,11973,5550,8386,6027,7639,7584,10014,6120,6808,5349,7216,10041,5351,9616,5350,10415,36,594],"class_list":["post-22155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-allegations","tag-attacks","tag-complaint","tag-declined","tag-dropped","tag-elon-musk","tag-fake","tag-female","tag-flight","tag-harassment","tag-interview","tag-jet","tag-lawyer","tag-london","tag-musk","tag-naked","tag-one","tag-penis","tag-platform","tag-pledge","tag-rocket","tag-sex","tag-sexual-harassment","tag-sexual-misconduct","tag-shares","tag-social-media","tag-spacex","tag-speech","tag-tesla","tag-train","tag-twitter","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}