San Francisco-based CEO of a tech company has been accused of forcing his assistant into
sexual slavery
and abusing her for years. According to a report in New York Post, 45-year-old co-founder and former CEO of
Tradeshift Christian Lanng
has been named in the lawsuit by an ex-staffer who claims he forced her to sign a slavery contract.
The woman, identified as
Jane Doe
, claims Lanng forced her to sign the contract just months after hiring her as his executive assistant.
He then reportedly subjected her to years of “unwanted sexual horror,” which involved “inflicting physical pain on her by various means, urinating on her and routinely penetrating her person with foreign objects.”
What the contract “said”
According to Jane Doe’s lawsuit, Lanng made her sign a nine-page contract that stipulated that she must “always be sexually available for her master when he needs sex and to never refuse him sex.
“Whenever she sees her master in private for the first time, she is to kneel and ask if there is anything she can do for him,” the purported contract added, according to the report.
The contract is claimed to also have a clause that she needs to maintain her weight between 130 and 155 pounds (58 to 70 kg). Also, that the assistant must take whatever punishment Lanng doled out without being angry, sullen or frustrated. “The slave agrees to submit completely to the master in all ways. There are no boundaries of place, time, or situation in which the slave may willfully refuse to obey the directive of the master without risking punishment,” the contract read, according to the lawsuit.
Why the employee signed the contract
Doe claimed that she signed the contract because she was afraid of losing her job. She “loved her job, was accomplishing important work in her new role and did not want to lose the opportunity to work a Tradeshift,” according to the lawsuit.
Lanng was fired earlier this year for “gross misconduct on multiple grounds” after management learned about “serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment” against him.
What Lanng said on the accusation
Lanng has denied these allegations, saying that the sexual relationship between him and his assistant was consensual. “The claims in this lawsuit are defamatory and not reflective of my past relationship with the plaintiff. The shocking and vile claims in the lawsuit are categorically false, and I reject allegations that I subjected someone to any form of abuse during my tenure as CEO or at any other time of my life,” he said, according to a statement given to the Post.
“In 2014, I made the grave error of judgment to hire someone I was dating and with whom I was engaged in a consensual sexual relationship. While this did not constitute a violation of Tradeshift’s human resources policies, it was irresponsible to employ someone with whom I was romantically involved. I regret the decision. It was a foolish mistake that I will not repeat.”
English (US) ·