Lawyer Gets Off After Begging Employee For Sex 78 Times In An Hour

Frankly, you've got to credit his ability to make the most of a billable hour.

We can argue the finer points of what is and is not sexual harassment around here, but there’s some behavior that we can all agree on. Like begging an employee for sex 78 times in an hour, or on average once every 46 seconds. Frankly, you’ve got to credit his ability to make the most of a billable hour.

We wrote about this earlier this year, when he was first slapped with a $100,000 fine and eight-month suspension for not only badgering the woman for sex, but also secretly filming her around the office. On those facts alone, it seemed like he might have deserved a longer timeout.

Now an appeals panel has reduced his suspension to a mere two months and it turns out his surreptitious recordings actually helped him….

First let’s start off with the dumb defense he offered that no one bought: that he was “the product of high functioning autism (known as Asperger’s Disorder) in the context of a complex relationship with a highly functional, articulate and assertive woman.” Nice try. Whenever there’s a serious disease you can try to coopt to justify being — in the words of the original panel — “a persistent sexual predator capable of considerable cunning, humiliating behaviour and deceit,” you’ve got to take it.

But the appeals panel did cut the guy some slack based on the secret recordings. While one would think spy video of Pepe Le Pew, Esq. propositioning a woman every few seconds would suck for him, the video revealed something much more complex. Like this exchange where the trainee sat on the lawyer’s lap and discussed the first thing that came up:

Lawyer: Yeah, I wouldn’t mind to f**k you on the table, but …
The woman: No. The answer is no.
Lawyer: You’ve got to – you’ve got to – I don’t know. It just seems to be a bit of sexual frustration there, anyway …
The woman: If you were single, yes.
Lawyer: No, I would like to just have one f**k.
The woman: No, no, no… if you were on your own I wouldn’t think twice about f**ing you on that table. Okay? Guaranteed.
Lawyer: …bulls**t.
The woman: Okay. Guaranteed. Okay. You know that, and I say that sincerely, but I won’t cross that line.
Lawyer: You wouldn’t even go part of the way?
The woman: I would have to live with it … no.
Lawyer: Like cuddle?
The woman: I give you a cuddle all the time.

The video then showed the woman giving the lawyer a cuddle, “in fact several close and lasting embraces, as well as an apparently warm and affectionate kiss, while for the majority of the time sitting on his knee, facing him and stroking his head,” the appeal judges said in a recent decision granting the lawyer’s appeal and reducing his ban from practising law to two months.

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Some may use this “she was into it” narrative to be apologists for sexual harassment generally. Which would be stupid. Pressuring a trainee who consistently says “no” and who depends on the lawyer for continued — and future — employment is definitely sexual harassment. What’s left is a question of how severe the punishment. Now once you go down the road of “if you were on your own I wouldn’t think twice about f**ing you on that table” while sitting on him, the requisite penalty has got to be something less egregious than chasing a woman with no interest around the office. Add in that the two knew each other for almost 10 years prior to when she became his trainee and there’s increasingly little to justify that eight-month suspension. But there’s still cause for some suspension and the appeals panel split the difference well.

But right now, let’s step away from what’s important — the whole don’t badger trainees for sex thing — and talk about this messed up relationship. Remember she declined to “f**k on that table” because of her loyalty to the guy’s girlfriend:

In 2011, she also became friendly with lawyer’s partner before he started harassing her.

There were 11 incidents in total that took place over two months from May 2011, the Herald Sun reported.

This included a time where the 46-year-old had his partner send his employee a nude photo of himself via text message.

What What Whaaat? Listen sister, if Carlita Danger is sending you the dick pics, she may not be the jealous type. Apparently five days after the marathon 78 propositions…

Five days later the lawyer, his girlfriend and the woman went to the woman’s beach house to try to resolve their issues before the lawyer terminated the woman’s placement.

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“Resolve their issues.” So that’s what they’re calling “attempted three-way” these days.

Lawyer filmed himself asking employee for sex 78 times in one hour [The Age]
‘You won’t even go part of the way?’ The lawyer who demanded sex off woman employee 78 TIMES in an hour [The Daily Mail]

Earlier: Non-Sequiturs: 07.10.14
Harvard Law Professors Decry Sexual Harassment Policy… Dumbly