Former ESPN anchor Adrienne Lawrence's lawsuit against the WorldWide Leader contains explosive allegations of sexism against the company. Sports Illustrated obtained all 93 pages and broke down the suit, which primarily targets anchor John Buccigross, whom Lawrence says acted predatory towards her and was "grooming her for a sexual relationship."
Text messages between Lawrence and Buccigross were first published by the Boston Globe in December. In response, ESPN released pages of texts between the two parties, in an apparent attempt to discredit Lawrence's accusations. While many of the messages were flirtatious, the interest seemed to be mutual.
But Lawrence's complete lawsuit goes deeper, painting a picture of deep-seated misogyny at ESPN. Lawrence claims her career was halted when her "objections communicated to management that she was unwilling to capitulate to sexual pressure, entertain inappropriate sexual advances, or remain silent about unprofessional behavior in order to advance at ESPN." In order to stop men at ESPN from pursuing her, she says she wore a fake engagement ring.
The specific allegations against Buccigross say he "pretended to like everything Ms. Lawrence liked, including things she had never mentioned to him but had recently posted on her social media pages." Lawrence says Human Resources "colluded" with Buccigross to keep his conduct under wraps. The lawsuit claims former ESPN radio anchor Ryen Russillo approached Lawrence about her perceived relationship with Buccigross, saying she was receiving negative treatment at work because of it.
In addition, Lawrence cites the creation of alleged fake accounts on social media that she says supported Buccigross and disparaged her. Some of those so-called bot accounts professed their innocence Monday.
"I am not an @espn bot.....I repeat, I am not an ESPN bot," @SuperRG1 tweeted.
"Hello there, I am not an espn bot! I just stand for Justice!," @TomJohnson69420 tweeted.
Lawrence, who worked at ESPN from 2015 -– 2017 as part of a fellowship to increase racial diversity, says her complaints resulted in her exit from the company. In a statement released Monday night, ESPN denies Lawrence's contentions.
"We conducted a thorough investigation of the claims Adrienne Lawrence surfaced to ESPN and they are entirely without merit," it reads. "Ms. Lawrence was hired into a two-year talent development program and was told that her contract would not be renewed at the conclusion of the training program. At that same time, ESPN also told 100 other talent with substantially more experience, that their contracts would not be renewed. The company will vigorously defend its position and we are confident we will prevail in court."
The lawsuit also targets iconic anchor Chris Berman, saying he left a "threatening" and "racially disparaging" voicemail for Jemele Hill in 2016. Hill denied the allegation as well.
Re: Chris Berman pic.twitter.com/p7NqjHiV7r
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) March 6, 2018
