A former Fox Sports reporter and anchor on Friday filed a lawsuit against the network and top executive Charlie Dixon, saying he sexually assaulted her after coaxing her up to his hotel room to discuss Super Bowl plans in 2016 and was later pushed out of her job for fighting back.
Julie Stewart-Binks said in her complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, that she was inspired to speak up after a former hairstylist for Fox Sports filed a lawsuit on Jan. 5 saying a former host had made repeated unwanted sexual advances toward her and that Dixon had groped her.
Andrew Fegyveresi, a spokesperson for Fox, said in an e-mail that the claims had been addressed.
hoto: AP
“These allegations are from over eight years ago,” his e-mail said. “At the time, we promptly hired a third-party firm to investigate and addressed the matter based on their findings.”
Fegyveresi did not respond to a request to elaborate on what the investigation found or how their findings were addressed.
Stewart-Binks covered soccer and hockey in Canada and moved to Los Angeles in 2013 to join the team at Fox Sports 1, the lawsuit said.
She was invited to cover the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics as a host and returned to report on the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, the Stanley Cup playoffs and the US men’s and women’s national soccer teams. In the fall of 2014, she was the main sideline reporter for the Anaheim Ducks.
Jamie Horowitz became president of Fox Sports in May 2015 and hired Dixon two months later to be the executive vice president of content, the lawsuit said.
“The two had the power to pick and choose who would be on camera for the networks,” the lawsuit said.
In the buildup to the 2016 Super Bowl, plans were under way for the show Jason Whitlock’s House Party By the Bay and Stewart-Binks was told she was going to appear on the program, the lawsuit said.
The night before her meeting with the show’s team, she received a text from Dixon asking her to meet him at his hotel, the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, Dixon told her they needed to talk about the show, and then began berating her, saying he did not want her going to the Super Bowl, because she was not “funny, interesting or talented.”
He said she was not “capable of handling big moments on TV” and people would only watch if she got on the bar and took off her top,” the lawsuit said.
As Stewart-Binks scrambled to come up with a response that would show her talent, Dixon invited her to his hotel room to see the view from his balcony, the suit said.
She agreed, reluctantly, but once on the balcony, Dixon pushed her against the wall, pinned down her arms, pressed his body against hers and tried to force his tongue into her mouth, the lawsuit said.
Stewart-Binks pushed him away and ran from the room, the suit said.
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