BBC HARASSMENT SCANDAL: Presenter bombarded by texts from three married male colleagues
A BBC reporter has spoken out over the sexual harassment she suffered after she was subjected to to advances from three married male colleagues.
Rajini Vaidyanathan, a correspondent based in Washington DC, revealed in a blogpost on the BBC website she had been subjected to sexually inappropriate advances from the colleagues, one of whome was later sacked.
Ms Vaidyanathan also gave BBC Radio 4’s Today programme an account of her experiences during her 15-year career at the corporation.
She decided to go public in the wake of the ‘Me Too’ social media trend, used by women to share their experience of sexual harassment, which has emerged after the exposure of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
In her blog post, Ms Vaidyanathan revealed a married colleague started sending her sexually explicit messages a few years ago.
She wrote: “I was horrified but at first I thought I needed to be polite, as there was a chance we’d work together again (why do women always feel they need to be polite in these situations?)
“I didn’t really know what to say, so I responded telling him that it sounded pretty normal for some men to think like that, hoping he’d go away.
“But his messages continued and became more creepy. He said he’d fantasised about sex with powerful women, and how he wanted to cheat on his wife.
“I told him to talk to someone else – not me – and to get help. I didn’t tell anyone at first. I felt disgusted but kept it to myself.”
She later learnt another female colleague has also been targeted with sexually explicit messages from the same man.
Ms Vaidyanathan said: “Soon after I heard he’d been fired. Another colleague had filed a complaint against him.”
She also recounted two other examples of another colleague who made sexual advances at an Italian restaurant in New York in 2004 and another married colleague who knocked on her hotel room door after sending her a “suggestive” text.
In a tweet she revealed managers were “open” about her complaint and the colleague was “sacked within days” of a complaint being made.
She said the BBC had been “extremely supportive in allowing me to share my story. And continues to be”.
A spokesman for the BBC told Express.co.uk: “We wouldn’t comment on staff matters but we take any allegations of inappropriate behaviour, bullying or harassment very seriously and have clear procedures to deal with them.”