“SHIKSAS” SPEAK OUT AGAINST THEIR EMPLOYER, SEXUAL PREDATOR DOV CHARNEY

9th March 2011

By Noor al Haqiqa

Snippits and Snappits

For years we have been watching the sexualization of our young people; much of this has been accomplished by the fashion industry with its insistence on using children as models. Have you ever wondered about mindset of those who have helped bring about this current state of affairs? 

Most men who work in the fashion industry are homosexual, but not all. Many are just normal folks. However, there are always exceptions to any rule. In this instance, it is hyper-sexualized priapic satyriasist Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel. (Basically all those fancy words translate as "man whore".)

We all know about the attitude of Jewish men towards “shiksas”. The word “shiksa” refers to a gentile woman and primarily carries with it the connotation of filth. For many Jewish men, there is the usual double standard towards women. Those of other races are fair game for objectification and carnal pleasure alone. 

Dov Charney in the workplace ~ resembling a sleazy 1970's porn star

"I could pull my penis out right now, and I guarantee you no one would be offended." ~ From The Jewish Journal

"Masturbation in front of women is underrated.

It's much easier on the woman. She gets to watch, it's a sensual experience that doesn't involve a man violating a woman." ~ From ClaudineKo.com

"I should tone down? So I don't get in trouble? It's fascism. You're asking me to succumb to tyranny." ~ From Business Week

The above quotes are found in New York Guest

Dov Charney, founder of fashion giant American Apparel is being sued for $250million for allegedly forcing a teenage employee to be his sex slave soon after her 18th birthday.

American Apparel claims all of these allegations are 'entirely baseless'

The explosive lawsuit accuses Dov Charney, 42, of carrying out a campaign of sexual harassment against Irene Morales after she joined the company as a 17-year-old sales associate. According to court papers filed in Brooklyn, New York, Miss Morales was hired by American Apparel in August 2007.

Charney allegedly demanded that she send him ‘sexually explicit’ photographs, text messages and emails; the pressure of Charney’s demands caused Morales to become "increasingly nervous and depressed," forcing a hospital stay after an "emotional breakdown," the suit alleges. The lawsuit said Charney made it ‘clear her employment would be forfeited if she did not comply.’

After her release, she told Charney of her breakdown, which he then used to increase the pressure, the quarter-billion dollar lawsuit against Charney, American Apparel and members of the company’s board of directors alleges.

This, according to the lawsuit, culminated in Charney sodomizing her soon after her 18th birthday ~ just months after she returned to work after her breakdown.

‘He informed her that if she wanted to remain employed and be advanced by the company she would have to engage in sexual acts with him as soon as she turned 18 years old,’ the suit adds.

Charney, who had invited her to his Manhattan pad on a business pretext, opened the door wearing only his briefs and "forced her to go down on her knees just inside the front door and perform fellatio upon him."

He then threw her on the bed and made her repeat the same sex act, "nearly suffocating her in the process," the suit says.

"She was then, to all intents and purposes, held prisoner in the apartment for several hours and forced to perform additional sexual acts," the suit says. ~ Huffington Post

The lawsuit claims the abuse continued for the next eight months. Mr Charney allegedly gave Miss Morales a ‘large dildo sex toy’ and was ‘induced’ to visit her employer’s Los Angeles home in the summer of last year where ‘she was subjected to extreme psychological abuse and torment,’ said the documents.

“I have long been appalled by the actions of AA’s sexist founder and CEO, Dov Charney. The man is a snake. He’s been repeatedly involved in sexual harrassment lawsuits, sponsors butt contests and exploits his models in ads like this and this. ~ Village Health

Charney forced her to work longer hours and perform personal tasks without extra pay leading up to the alleged attack on the day she turned 18. Afterward, he continued to demand sexual service and communications in exchange for her continued employment at American Apparel, the suit says.

Miss Morales claims the long hours she was forced to work even though she was in school ‘left her weakened, confused, exhausted and unable to fend off’ Charney’s advances.

‘Her life has drastically changed as a result of the sexual harassment. She is under the care of a doctor and is still suffering from the trauma,’ her lawyer says. Even after she has undergone extensive psychiatric treatment, she is suffering from "serious psychiatric injuries from which she will never recover.”

Charney, whose company is well known for its sexually provocative ads, has been accused by ex-employees of conducting business meetings in the nude.

Charney admits that he runs the offices with a sexually charged atmosphere and he has had several sexual harassment suits against him. These have never been proven in court.

Mr Baum said: ’Miss Morales started there when she was 17 and she was hoping to advance with opportunities in the fashion industry. But she has not found comparable employment since that date.’

Mr Baum said she did not deliberately go to authorities because of trauma and shame, but she may press criminal charges in the future.

He said: ’It is not uncommon for women who are the victims of sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rape to wait many years before they come forward. They are often scared of what people in society will think of them. They are embarrassed about what has occurred. It is only recently that Miss Morales decided to come forward,’ he added.

Miss Morales has put her signature on the court papers, swearing that what she claims happened is true

Miss Morales told the press: ‘'I believed I would work in a professional environment where promotions and work advancement would be based on merit and hard work. I was extremely devastated to find out that was not the case.'

The suit also accuses the company’s eight other board members of failing to protect Miss Morales from an executive they should have known was a ‘sexual predator.’

Peter Schey, an American Apparel lawyer, has responded with the following:

We have been informed today that [Morales], a former employee of American Apparel who left the company without complaint and resigned with a letter of gratitude regarding her positive experience at the company, has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit in New York against the company. 

Upon her resignation, [Morales] acknowledged in writing that she had no pending claims against the company and signed a severance agreement which included a full release of claims and an agreement to submit any future claims to confidential binding arbitration. All American Apparel's employees are subject to the same confidential arbitration agreement signed by [Morales] in order to protect the privacy interests of employees and former employees, and to prevent predatory plaintiffs and their attorneys from attempting to use the media to extort the company. Such an arbitration process was initiated by the company against [Morales] several weeks ago.

The company intends to file a formal complaint with the NY state bar seeking disciplinary action against [Morales'] lawyers who we believe are engaged in an illegal conspiracy to extort money from American Apparel. We are very confident that [Morales'] claims will be promptly referred by the court to confidential binding arbitration where her claims and the company's counter-claims will be resolved, we believe fully in favor of the company.

In a statement, American Apparel called the allegations ‘entirely baseless.’

‘CEO Dov Charney’s celebrity status in the fashion industry is being publicly exploited,’ it added.

Charney’s sense of style ~ evoking the seedy side of the disco era ~ permeates the company's in-store experience and advertising, including one ad picturing his bare backside. It also carries through to the workplace: Charney feels free to engage in consensual sexual relationships with his staff. "I've had relationships, loving relationships, that I'm proud of," he says. "I think it's a First Amendment right to pursue one's affection for another human being."

Charney is a self-described "hustler," who as a teen used to hawk T-shirts on the streets of his native Montreal. But now, he and his 4,500 employees are bumping up against the constrictions of the modern workplace. In a world in which the CEO of Boeing Co. (BA ) was forced to step down over an affair with an underling, Charney has made himself an easy target. Previously he was sued by three women ~ all former American Apparel employees ~ who claim they were sexually harassed by him at work.

In their sexual harassment suits, two of the women accuse Charney of exposing himself to them. One claims he invited her to masturbate with him and that he ran business meetings at his Los Angeles home wearing close to nothing.

Another says he asked her to hire young women with whom he could have sex, Asians preferred. All describe him using foul language in their presence, much of it demeaning to women.

Charney has been known to carry out board meetings in his underwear and was said to frequently refer to the women in the office as 'sluts' and 'whores'.

By way of defence he said: 'Some people love sluts.'

He denies that he has harassed anyone. He attributes the lawsuits to disgruntled former employees. In addition, he denies that he has ever pressured employees into a sexual relationship.

Charney says all three women did substandard work and gave no indication before they left that they had felt harassed. Charney says he never engaged in any of the acts of which he is accused. As for his language, he says that's par for the course in the fashion biz. "When I'm working with creative people I use the language of the street," he says. "It can get pretty salty."

Employment attorneys say Charney's language alone could get him into trouble. "You can't force women to be subject to certain conduct on the theory that this is a coarse working environment," says Washington, D.C. employment attorney Bruce A. Fredrickson. As for Charney's admitted "love affairs" with employees, San Francisco attorney Phil Horowitz, chair of the California Employment Lawyers Assn., says: "Any chief executive who's thinking of having sex with subordinates ought to have his head examined."

The suits follow a bizarre article last year in the women's magazine Jane. Charney was described as engaging in oral sex with a female employee and masturbating in front of the reporter. Charney doesn't deny taking part in any of the activities described in the article. He says he befriended the writer over the course of the two months it took her to research the piece. "I've never done anything sexual that wasn't consensual," Charney says. The reporter, Claudine Ko, confirmed his take on events to BusinessWeek.

 

Tacee Webb, a 32-year-old mother of two who opens new stores on the West Coast for American Apparel, says she has heard Charney curse, scream, and make comments about employees' appearances, but never to the point of it being offensive. "I've seen a lot of things go on at other businesses, and it's all weird and hushed," she says. "Dov is just out in the open." Adds Clara Reis, Charney's personal assistant for two years, who left American Apparel for another job earlier this year: "Some people might misunderstand the way he is about sexuality. He just considers sex a natural thing. He won't put any limits on it."

Under Charney's watchful eyes, American Apparel has become the epitome of hipster cool, with its slim-fitting, logo-free clothes; a savvy, sexy ad campaign; and his pro-labor philosophy. Charney promotes his business as "sweatshop-free," and to back that up he pays his mostly Latino factory workers nearly twice the minimum wage, throwing in health insurance, subsidized lunches, and paid time off to take English classes on the premises. Such jobs ~ let alone ones with perks ~ are rare in the U.S. apparel industry, where 97% of the goods are imported. 

 

“I have the highest-paid apparel workers in the world," he boasts.

As a result, Charney has been the subject of positive profiles in such places as Time, The New Yorker, and CNN.

You'll also see the blatantly sexual side of American Apparel. The stores' white walls are dotted with product shots. Like the company's signature advertisements, these are grainy, seemingly candid photos of young people in various states of undress. In case shoppers miss the message that American Apparel's clothes are sexy, Charney sometimes pins up pages from 1970s Penthouse magazines.

To hear Charney explain it, he's connecting with an emerging youth movement, an underground network of urban hipsters from Brooklyn to Berlin. They surf the Internet for gossip and fashion trends and race to get copies of gritty lifestyle magazines named Vice and Purple. These twentysomething consumers don't mind being marketed to as long as the images look real, unvarnished, and match their own casual attitudes toward sex. 

Charney, in a characteristically grandiose flourish, likens his young customers to the free-spirits of the 1960s. "Turn off the sound on Eyes on the Prize," he says of the award-winning documentary on the civil rights era, "and it looks like a fashion show."

The company's racy ads ~ which run mostly in alternative newspapers such as New York's The Village Voice and LA Weekly ~ that the line between work and recreational sex at American Apparel begins to blur. Charney takes many of the photos himself, often using company employees as models as well as people he finds on the street.

In his marketing, Charney has been adept at weaving his libertarian sexual attitude with his progressive labor practices. But it's another matter to make that attitude a bedrock principle of the workplace..

Since the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in 1986 that a hostile work environment was a violation of an employee's civil rights, sexual harassment cases have become a fact of life in American business. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature can constitute harassment if it's severe or pervasive. It's not illegal for a boss to pursue relationships with underlings, so long as the relationships are welcome. 

 Despite the brilliant concept quoted, this is no more than

the lewd promotion of teenage gender-bending as sexy

BusinessWeek spoke with seven former workers who say they were offended by what they called a highly sexual atmosphere at American Apparel. They told stories of senior managers who pursued sexual relationships with less senior colleagues and rewarded their favorites with promotions, company cars, and apartments.

"It was a company built on lechery," says a former stock person. "I thought it was a male contemporary perspective on feminism, but it turns out to be just a gimmick," says another ex-employee. And another: "I made sure to stay away from the store when I knew [Charney] was coming into town. It's not one person ~ he's aiming for all women."

Others say it's not surprising that more women haven't spoken out. "When you see the women that work there, you see they all have the same look," says apparel industry veteran Tony Augustine, 58, who left a senior sales job at American Apparel last November after a year and a half. "They're pretty, but they lack direction, and along comes their guru. He puts them in jobs, and they don't have to work very hard and they are getting paid more than they would anywhere else."

If there's a pattern of promotions or other opportunities granted to employees who engaged in sex with a manager, the employer may be liable for sex discrimination claims from other workers.