A judge is allowing a potentially devastating lawsuit to proceed against a former Fox News star.
First, Ed Henry failed to get the sex trafficking allegations against him dismissed. Jennifer Eckhart, a former Fox Business associate producer, accused Henry of rape. Henry will now face new claims from Eckhart under New York’s Adult Survivors Act.
Law&Crime reports:
Eckhart’s legal team filed the fourth amended complaint on Wednesday, part of a rush of new litigation entering New York courts since the passage of a law temporarily rescinding the statute of limitations on sex-abuse lawsuits.
The case, which was originally filed in July 2020, originally named some of the conservative cable network’s superstars, including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as co-defendants – as well as one additional plaintiff. But, since then, the parties have been pared down considerably. Eckhardt is the lone person suing and Henry is the only person being sued. Fox News Network LLC is also still on the hook.
In 2021, U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams advanced multiple claims that Eckhardt filed, and the judge recently gave Eckhart permission to file a fourth amended complaint in the Southern District of New York. (Judge Abrams is the sister of Law&Crime founder Dan Abrams.)
Formally filed on Tuesday, the latest iteration of the lawsuit, like all of the others, contains a “Trigger Warning” cautioning readers in fully capitalized red text that the complaint contains “Highly Graphic Information of a Sexual Nature, Including Sexual Assault.”
The filing details the circumstances surrounding Eckhart’s alleged rape:
After having extremely brief sexual intercourse, Defendant Henry told Ms. Eckhart how beautiful she was, said she belonged in front of the camera, and that she was “wasting her time” as a Production Assistant behind the scenes at Fox News. Instead, Defendant Henry offered to help advance Ms. Eckhart’s career, telling her that he could “get her in a room with some really powerful people.”
The message was clear: Ms. Eckhart would be rewarded for succumbing to Defendant Henry’s sexual advances as he would use his powerful position at Fox News to advance her journalism career. Alternatively, if she refused, she risked being punished (i.e., be fired from her job)…
Eckhart, then 24, said “she cried herself to sleep” after leaving Henry.
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It seems, according to the story above, that the first sexual encounter was a mutual ting. The promise of advancement is what seems to have not happened. Wrong complaint.
Makes one wonder how many of these sexual assault cases are just contrivances by women who become angry at their boyfriend for something else! Often difficult to decide which are real!
Looking for a big pay check. I pray for dismissal and she pays his legal fees.