Rampant harassment, bullying, and sexual pressure infested Victoria’s Secret from leadership on down, revealed an investigative report from The New York Times published Saturday. The story described a culture at the well-known lingerie brand that permitted executives—particularly former president and chief marketing officer Ed Razek—to ask the company’s vaunted models to sit on their laps, to pose nude without pay, to attempt to kiss models, and, in one case, to touch a model’s crotch without her consent before the company’s fashion show.
Leslie Wexner, the billionaire at the head of Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands, knew of the problems and even himself demeaned women in conversation, according to the investigation. The financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein managed Wexner’s finances, and Epstein himself posed as a Victoria’s Secret model recruiter to lure young women into sex on occasion.
The company did not dispute the story in a statement to The Times saying that the company had made progress in ameliorating the problems: “We regret any instance where we did not achieve this objective.”
Read it at The New York Times
