Fox Contributor Claims Her Agent Told you to Stay Quiet on Sexual Harassment Claims
/
A Fox News Contributor claims that she was sexually harassed by a Fox News executive says that when she turned to her TV agent, she was told to stay quiet about the incident.
Huff Post writes that agents from ICM, discouraged a client, who was a Fox News contributor at the time, from approaching the network with a claim that she had been sexually assaulted by a Fox News executive.
Later, when the contributor decided to file a claim against the network, the agents ignored multiple requests from her attorneys to corroborate her story and provide evidence of their communication with Fox News.
The former Fox News contributor, Tamara Holder, told her agents at ICM that Francisco Cortes, the vice president of Fox News Latino, tried to force her to perform oral sex on him in February 2015. She says ICM advised her to stay quiet, but she ignored the advice and filed a complaint with Fox News. The company investigated, fired Cortes weeks later and reached a settlement with Holder worth more than $2.5 million, according to a March 2017 report in the New York Times.
“ICM Partners has a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment,” an ICM spokesman told HuffPost in response to an email with detailed questions. “We will thoroughly investigate this inquiry.” The spokesman declined to comment further.
A lawyer for Cortes told the Times he was “considering Mr. Cortes’ legal options.”
Holder declined to comment on her tenure at Fox News, the incident involving Cortes, and her settlement, citing a strict confidentiality agreement she signed with the network. She was, however, willing to talk in a phone interview about her experience with her agents at ICM.
HuffPost also obtained emails between Holder and her agents, along with phone records.
“I believed that my agents’ job was not only to help me find work but also to protect me,” Holder told HuffPost. “Instead, they told me my career was going to be over if I disclosed my abuse to my employer, slammed the door in my face when I went against their advice to remain silent, and intentionally refused to assist my lawyers.”
If you're looking for an agent that will stand behind you 100% and look out for your best interest, feel free to use any of the agents listed to the right of this story. FTVLive only does business with the best of the best and you can rest assured, if they are sponsors of FTVLive, they can be fully trusted.
