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Tag: harassment

  • Everyone Who Has Publicly Accused Bill Murray of Misconduct

    Everyone Who Has Publicly Accused Bill Murray of Misconduct

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    Green was just nine years old when he appeared on Saturday Night Live, where he says he had an unpleasant encounter with Murray backstage. On the YouTube show Good Mythical Morning, Green alleged that Murray “made a big fuss” about him sitting on the arm of his chair. “I was like, ‘That is absurd. I am sitting on the arm of this couch. There are several lengths of this sofa. Kindly eff off.’ And he was like, ‘That’s my chair.’” Then, Green said, Murray picked him up by his ankles and dangled him over a trash can while saying, “The trash goes in the trash can.” 

    “I was screaming, and I swung my arms, flailed wildly—full contact with his balls,” Green recalled. “He dropped me in the trash can, the trash can falls over. I was horrified. I ran away, hid under the table in my dressing room, and just cried.” Murray hasn’t addressed Green’s allegations.

    Anjelica Huston

    Oscar winner Anjelica Huston described Murray as “a shit” after working with him on Wes Anderson’s 2004 film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. In 2019, Huston told Vulture that while filming, Murray invited everyone in the cast except her to dinner. “I was really hurt,” she continued. “And then I think we met again in Florence, because that movie was shot all over Italy, and we were doing a scene at Gore Vidal’s house in Ravello, and [Murray] said, ‘Hey, how’ve you been? I missed you.’ I said, ‘You’re full of shit. You didn’t miss me.’ He looked all confused for a moment.” However, Huston says that Murray showed up at the funeral of her late husband, Robert Graham, and that Murray “couldn’t have been nicer that day.” “He showed up,” she said. “A lot of people didn’t.”

    Solange Knowles

    Murray’s alleged misdeeds at SNL continued as recently as 2016, when he appeared as a special guest. At the taping, Murray allegedly grabbed Solange Knowles’s hair, repeatedly asking the singer if her hair was a wig just after she had performed her song “Don’t Touch My Hair” as the week’s musical guest. While Solange has never publicly accused Murray of doing this, she liked tweets describing the incident from TV writer and producer Judnick Mayard, who witnessed the interaction. “Your yearly reminder that I saw Bill Murray put both his hands into Solange’s scalp after asking her three times if her hair was a wig or not,” wrote Mayard, in a tweet liked by Solange. Murray has yet to comment on these allegations.

    Lucy Liu

    Charlie’s Angels star Liu claims that Murray hurled “inexcusable and unacceptable” comments at her during a rehearsal on the set of the 2000 action-comedy, after a scene the pair was filming was reworked without his knowledge. Per The Times, Murray allegedly told Liu that she “couldn’t act” and Liu responded by allegedly throwing punches at the comedian. “I stood up for myself, and I don’t regret it,” she said. “Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there’s no need to condescend or to put other people down.” Liu told Deadline in 2021 that she has “nothing against Bill Murray” and the two saw each other at a Saturday Night Live reunion and he was “perfectly nice.” Murray shared his version of events with The Times in 2009, saying, “Look, I will dismiss you completely if you are unprofessional and working with me. When our relationship is professional, and you’re not getting that done, forget it.”

    McG

    Charlie’s Angels director McG (whose full name is Joseph McGinty Nichol) also apparently had his own issues with Murray on set, claiming Murray headbutted him while they were filming. “I’ve been headbutted by an A-list star. Square in the head,” Nichol told The Guardian in May 2009. “An inch later and my nose would have been obliterated.” Murray, however, claims this is completely false. “That’s bulls—! That’s complete crap!” he told The Times. “I don’t know why he made that story up. He has a very active imagination.”

    Jennifer Butler Murray

    During their divorce proceedings, Murray’s ex-wife Jennifer Butler Murray accused the actor of assault, alleging that the Lost in Translation star hit her in the face in November 2007 and told her she’s “lucky he didn’t kill her.” In the filing, Butler Murray also accused her ex-husband of “adultery, addiction to marijuana and alcohol, abusive behavior…sexual addictions and frequent abandonment.” At the time, Murray’s attorney, John McDougall, didn’t respond to the allegations made by Murray’s wife but released a statement regarding the divorce. “Bill Murray is deeply saddened by the breakup of his marriage with Jennifer,” said McDougall. “He and his wife made loving parents, and they are committed to the best interests of their children.” In 2008, their divorce was finalized and Butler Murray was granted primary custody of their four children.

    Harold Ramis 

    Murray collaborated with late actor Harold Ramis on Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, and Meatballs without any apparent issues, but the duo reportedly had a falling-out while Ramis was directing Murray in Groundhog Day. Ramis’s daughter Violet Ramis Stiel detailed her father and Murray’s thorny relationship in Ghostbuster’s Daughter: Life With My Dad, Harold Ramis, writing that the pair had multiple arguments on set, including one incident where Ramis grabbed Murray by the collar, and shoved him up against a wall. “Bill was going through a difficult time in his personal life, and he and my dad were not seeing eye to eye on the tone of the film,” Stiel said, and revealed that Murray “completely shut my dad out…for the next twenty-plus years.” According to Stiel’s book, Murray reportedly attempted to reconcile with Ramis just before his death in 2014.

    Rob Schneider

    Another entry in the Murray-misbehaving-at-SNL annals, Rob Schneider said that Murray “absolutely hated” the cast when he returned to host in 1993. “He wasn’t very nice to us,” said Schneider on SiriusXM’s Jim Norton & Sam Roberts Show. “He hated us on Saturday Night Live when he hosted. Absolutely hated us. I mean, seething…. It was just naked rage.” Schneider went on to say Murray seemed to have a particular distaste for cast members Adam Sandler and Chris Farley. “[He] really hated Sandler,” Schneider said, speculating that Sandler’s comedy just wasn’t his “groove.” Schneider rationalized a reason why Murray, “hated Chris Farley with a passion,” suggesting that it might have had to do with Farley’s similarities with Murray’s friend and SNL costar John Belushi, both of whom died of drug overdoses at the age of 33. “I want to believe that it’s because Chris thought it was cool to be Belushi, who [was] his friend who he saw die, that he thought it was cool to be that out of control. That’s my interpretation, but I don’t really know. I don’t believe it. I only believe it 50%.”

    Laura Ziskin

    A producer on Bill Murray’s What About Bob?, Laura Ziskin said that she butted heads (metaphorically) with Murray and that Murray once threw her in a lake while they were filming, albeit in jest. “Bill also threatened to throw me across the parking lot and then broke my sunglasses and threw them across the parking lot,” she said in a 2003 interview with The Baltimore Sun. “I was furious and outraged at the time, but having produced a dozen movies, I can safely say it is not common behavior.” Murray did not comment on the allegations at the time.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Ex-eBay Executives Get Prison Time For Bizarre Harassment Scheme

    Ex-eBay Executives Get Prison Time For Bizarre Harassment Scheme

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    BOSTON (AP) — A former eBay Inc. executive was sentenced on Thursday to almost five years in prison for leading a scheme to terrorize the creators of an online newsletter that included sending live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath and other disturbing deliveries to their home.

    David Steiner, who along with his wife was the target of the harassment campaign, told the court that eBay former Senior Director of Safety and Security James Baugh and other eBay employees made their lives “a living hell.” He expressed fear that other companies would use it as a blueprint to go after journalists in the future.

    “This was a bizarre, premeditated assault on our lives … with buy-in at the highest levels of eBay,” Steiner told the judge.

    Another former eBay executive, David Harville, was sentenced later Thursday to two years behind bars for his role in the scheme targeting David and Ina Steiner, the publisher and reporter who angered executives with coverage of the company in their newsletter, eCommerceBytes.

    Baugh and Harville, eBay’s onetime director of global resiliency, are among seven former employees who have pleaded guilty to charges in the case.

    Court records in the case show how the top eBay executives became enraged by the Steiners’ newsletter and readers who posted comments criticizing the company on their site, which eBay viewed as a threat to its business.

    The scheme was hatched in August 2019 after Ina Steiner wrote a story about a lawsuit brought by eBay accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers. A half-hour after the article was published, then-CEO Devin Wenig sent another top eBay executive a message saying: “If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” according to court documents. That executive sent Wenig’s message to Baugh and called Ina Steiner a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.”

    Soon, Ina Steiner began receiving harassing and sometimes threatening Twitter messages. Bizarre anonymous packages started arriving at the couple’s home, including a box of live spiders, a funeral wreath and a book about surviving the loss of a spouse. Ina Steiner began receiving dozens of strange emails from groups like an irritable bowel syndrome patient support group and the Communist Party of the United States, authorities say.

    Authorities portrayed Baugh as the mastermind of the scheme and said he directed eBay employees to use prepaid debit cards, disguises and overseas email accounts to hide the company’s involvement.

    Baugh then recruited Harville to go with him to Boston to spy on the couple, authorities say. Baugh, Harville and another eBay employee went to the couple’s home in the hopes of installing a GPS tracker on their car but the garage was locked, so Harville bought tools with a plan to break into it, prosecutors say.

    Harville’s attorneys said he had no involvement in or knowledge about the threatening messages or deliveries sent by his colleagues.

    eBay former Senior Director of Safety and Security James Baugh arrives for his sentencing in a cyber stalking case at Moakley Federal Court on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, in Boston. (Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via AP)

    Prosecutors said in court documents that although Harville wasn’t at the initial meetings about the scheme, “he was aware enough of the harassment by the time he was in Boston to joke with Baugh about delivering a bag of human feces, a running chain saw, and a rat” to their porch.

    Baugh’s lawyers said their client had faced “intense, relentless pressure” from executives — including Wenig — to do something about the Steiners. They described Baugh as a “tool” who was used by eBay and then discarded when “an army of outside lawyers descended to conduct an ‘internal investigation’ aimed at saving the company and its top executives from prosecution.”

    Wenig, who stepped down as CEO in 2019, was not criminally charged in the case but faces a civil lawsuit from the couple. He has denied any knowledge of the harassment campaign. In court papers, his lawyers have said the “take her down” quote was taken out of context and that the “natural inference” is that he’s referring to taking “lawful action, such as a public rebuttal,” not “a series of bizarre criminal acts.”

    “At this point, an independent investigation has said that Mr. Wenig had no knowledge and the prosecutors in the case have made it clear that Baugh was responsible. Devin never told anyone to do anything unethical or illegal and if he had known about it, he would have stopped it,” a spokesperson for Wenig said in an email.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Kosto accused Baugh of trying to deflect blame, saying that no one above him at eBay “told him to anonymously threaten and harass and stalk the Steiners.”

    The Steiners say the terror campaign stole their sense of safety and caused devastating consequences to their business and finances.

    “What eBay — the defendant and other co-conspirators, both indicted and unindicted — did to us has changed me forever and I don’t think the old David is coming back,” David Steiner said.

    Both Baugh and Harville apologized to the Steiners for their actions before their sentences were handed down. Baugh told the Steiners he hopes that they will forgive him some day.

    “I take 100% responsibility for this, and there is no excuse for what I have done,” Baugh said. “The bottom line is simply this: If I had done the right thing and been strong enough to make the right choice, we wouldn’t be here today, and for that I am truly sorry.”

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  • Announcing the Launch of the 2018 Campaign ‘HARASSMENT ENDS NOW’

    Announcing the Launch of the 2018 Campaign ‘HARASSMENT ENDS NOW’

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    Press Release
    –


    updated: Jan 2, 2018


    ELK GROVE, Calif., January 2, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Glen Padayachee is considered the country’s new face of civil rights amongst today’s professional employment and civil rights groups. As the head of EEO and HR Consultants, Padayachee today announced the nationwide launch of the 2018 HARASSMENT ENDS NOW Campaign.

    Sexual harassment and discrimination remains a growing epidemic in this country and employers are scrambling to find a solution to this crisis. Employers have an affirmative duty to train and educate their managers and supervisors on how to prevent harassment, to take immediate and appropriate steps in stopping misconduct and to protect their employees from unwanted and unlawful harassment.
    ​
    Glen Padayachee’s new book “Equal Employment Opportunity 101 – A Manager’s Guide to Understanding Equal Employment Opportunity in the Workplace” is a must-have tool for every employer; key concepts, real-life examples and best practices noted throughout the book will (if followed) create a healthy, positive and productive workplace. A healthy and harassment-free workplace, one that is promoted and supported by educated and knowledgeable managers and supervisors, will reduce and/or eliminate an organization’s  exposure to liability for harassment claims.

    Our 2018 HARASSMENT ENDS NOW Campaign brings awareness to our national crisis of sexual harassment and discrimination; we send a strong message to employers to take action now to further educate their managers and supervisors and ensure all their managers and supervisors have a copy of this book.

    Carrie Mabie, National Campaign Director

    The areas covered in this book are the most fundamentally essential and critical competencies that every manager and supervisor should be aware of. While organization policies are important, the scenarios and situational examples provided throughout the book are “real-life” challenges that managers and supervisors are faced with on a daily basis.

    This book, the cornerstone of the campaign’s commitment to end harassment, is the best and single-greatest resource for managers and supervisors on effective ways to avoid allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination.

    “Our 2018 HARASSMENT ENDS NOW Campaign brings awareness to our national crisis of sexual harassment and discrimination; we send a strong message to employers to take action now to further educate their managers and supervisors and ensure all their managers and supervisors have a copy of this book.” – CARRIE MABIE, Campaign Director

    This is more than a campaign says Padayachee, “It’s a movement; a million-manager march.” Working together with public and corporate organizations across the country, we can achieve a healthy, safe and harassment-free workplace and give back to individuals the dignity and respect they deserve. We want every organization to join the movement, be part of this national campaign and share the commitment to end sexual harassment and discrimination. We begin by encouraging employers to educate and train their managers; our mission and our message is for every employer to provide a copy of this book, Equal Employment Opportunity 101, to their managers and supervisors.

    Organizations can order books by visiting the website: www.HarassmentEndsNow.com

    MEDIA CONTACT:
    Glen Padayachee
    glen@HarassmentEndsNow.com
    916.996.1848

    Source: HARASSMENT ENDS NOW

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