Brooke Hundley, whose affair with then-coworker Steve Phillips resulted in both being fired from ESPN, is now suing the company and went on “The Early Show” to make her case.
On the show, Hundley claimed that when she reported Phillips began acting inappropriately to her, supervisors advised her to keep quiet as “women tend to look bad in these situations.” Continuing allegations that The Big Lead’s Jason McIntyre called “damning” (he’s correct if there’s truth to them), she said:
“[Female supervisors] just told me a story of how they had been harassed, almost as if, ‘Okay, you’ve been officially initiated.’ We all have a story to tell, this is just the culture.”
Yes, bad if true (and there’s probably at least some level of truth to this – Mike Tirico, anyone?), but…Hundley isn’t exactly a proven reliable source. When her affair with Phillips ended, she handled it rather…poorly.
And her saying that type of conduct “had nothing to do with [her] daily work,” and therefore shouldn’t preclude her from getting another job, doesn’t fly – of course employers should be wary of her because of these details (in fairness, Hundley did admit she “made some really dumb decisions”).
McIntyre speculated about the amount of money ESPN will have to pay Hundley to settle the suit, but it’s already pretty clear that no matter the result, no one will come out of this looking good.
(Source: SportsGrid.com)