A federal judge dismissed claims made against Fox News Channel in a lurid assault case that involved a former associate producer and a former correspondent, noting that management of the cable-news outlet had no knowledge of any conflict or relationship between the two parties until it was notified she had levied sexual harassment claims against him.
Fox News had last year filed a request for summary judgement in the case, in which the former producer, Jennifer Eckhart alleged she was raped by Ed Henry, a former Fox News correspondent who was dismissed from the Fox Corp.-backed outlet in 2020 following an investigation into a complaint about “willful sexual misconduct in the workplace.” Eckhart’s lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York in July of 2020. A lawyer for Henry has in the past claimed Eckhart “initiated and completely encouraged a consensual relationship.” Fox News terminated Eckhart in 2020 prior to her making the allegations tied to Henry.
In the original suit, Eckhart alleged Henry, who had been an anchor on “America’s Newsroom,” the network’s mid-morning news program, “groomed, psychologically manipulated and coerced Ms. Eckhart into having a sexual relationship with him, and that, when she would not comply voluntarily, he sexually assaulted her on office property, and raped her at a hotel where Fox News frequently lodged its visiting employees.”
Fox News, however, said it acted on Eckhart’s allegations as soon as they were made.
The judge, Ronnie Abrams, said in a decision Wednesday that “there is no direct evidence that Fox News was aware of Henry’s alleged harassment of Eckhart before it occurred. Eckhart acknowledges that she did not tell anyone at the network about their relationship until after she was terminated in mid-2020.” As for claims that Fox News was aware Henry had been involved in affairs with other female employees, the judge found that ” even though Fox News eventually learned about Henry’s extramarital affairs, it did not know about many of them until after Eckhart and Henry’s final sexual encounter in 2017,” adding: “Because there is no evidence that Fox News learned about these affairs until April 2017 or later, no reasonable jury could find that they put it on notice that Henry would assault her.”
The judge dismissed claims that Henry subjected Eckhart to “revenge porn,” but allowed claims of “gender-motivated violence, assault, battery, sex trafficking and harassment” to stand and move forward in the case. Henry has most recently been seen on Newsmax, the conservative news outlet.
