How one lawsuit unleashed a cascade of allegations against Roger Ailes

It started with just one accusation. In a stunning but brief lawsuit, a former television host accused one of the most towering figures in American media of sabotaging her career as retribution for refusing to have sex.

But by the time Roger Ailes, 76, was losing his grip on the cable network he helped found over allegations of sexual harassment, Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox host who sued him on 6 July, was part of a deafening chorus.

More than 20 women claiming misconduct had emerged by Thursday, when Ailes was out for good. His ouster on Thursday, accompanied by a letter from 21st Century Fox part-owner Rupert Murdoch praising Ailes’s career, was the culmination of an outside investigation and a plan the Murdoch family quickly set in motion to show Ailes the exit.

But none of this may have occurred without what followed Carlson’s original lawsuit: a cascade of sexual harassment accusations from women who encountered Ailes during his decades-long career in television and at the top echelons of Republican politics. In the hours and days after Carlson filed her lawsuit, so many other women accused Ailes of sexual misconduct that a few news outlets drew comparisons with Bill Cosby, the former comedian brought low by sexual assault claims in a similar onslaught.

Many of the women have reached out to Carlson’s attorneys directly. A spokesman for her legal team said that at last count, the number of women telling the lawyers they had witnesses or experienced Ailes’s harassment was more than 20.

But first came Carlson’s explosive lawsuit on 6 July. The 11-year veteran of Fox News claimed that Ailes had “sabotaged her career because she refused his sexual advances and [she] complained about severe and pervasive sexual harassment”.

Carlson accused Ailes of “ogling” her, making her turn around “so he could view her posterior”, and directly propositioning her for sex to maintain her career: “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better,” Ailes said, according to the lawsuit. “Sometimes problems are easier to solve” that way.

For refusing to sleep with Ailes, Carlson claims, she was removed from the popular show Fox & Friends and marooned in a low-ratings afternoon slot. Ailes also cut her pay, she claimed, before firing her.

Immediately on the day Carlson filed her lawsuit, numerous former and current Fox employees volunteered similar stories of Ailes misconduct.

A former Fox News contributor told the Huffington Post that in a meeting, Ailes “asked me to turn around so he can see my ass”. Another employee recalled: “He told me that if he was thinking of hiring a woman, he’d ask himself if he would fuck her, and if he would, then he’d hire her to be on camera.” A former Fox News employee told the Daily Beast: “One time he asked me if I was wearing underwear, and was he going to see anything ‘good’ … It’s happened to me and lots of other women.”

By the end of the day, Carlson’s legal team announced they’d heard from around 10 other women who claimed to be on the receiving end of Ailes’ harassment. A few days later came more detailed allegations by six of the women who contacted Carlson’s attorneys. Ailes biographer and New York magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman published their accounts.

One woman was Kellie Boyle, a Republican consultant who met Ailes in his role as a major Republican power broker. Boyle claimed Ailes pressured her for sex in exchange for a job opportunity, saying: “You know if you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys.” After she refused to sleep with him or his friends – to keep his friends happy, Ailes allegedly said, “You might have to give a blow job every once in a while” – she claims Ailes made clear that it cost her the job.

Another was Marsha Callahan, a former model who claims she was pressured for sex in the late 60s, when she allegedly encountered Ailes in his producer role for The Mike Douglas Show. “I recall very clearly, he said he’d put me on the show but I needed to go to bed with him.” Another former model, who gave Sherman her account anonymously, claimed Ailes exposed his genitals and told her, “kiss them”, and chased her around his office when she refused. A third model who auditioned for the show claims that Ailes pressured her to dress in a garter belt and stockings and perform a sexual act that she blocked from her mind.

Ailes has flatly denied all the allegations against him. Of Carlson’s legal action, he said: “This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously.” Of the statements of six other women, his personal attorney said: “It has become obvious that Ms Carlson and her lawyer are desperately attempting to litigate this in the press because they have no legal case to argue. The latest allegations, all 30 to 50 years old, are false.” A dozen or so former and current Fox anchors defended Ailes in the press, saying they couldn’t square the person they knew with these stories.

But by then, an outside investigation was underway, by a white shoe New York law firm, to investigate the allegations for 21st Century Fox. Their probing brought a giant revelation on 19 July, when Sherman revealed that Megyn Kelly, the undisputed star of the Fox News lineup, had described for the investigators in detail how Ailes had sexually harassed her some 10 years ago, at the very start of her Fox career.

At the same time, people with knowledge of sexual harassment claims against Ailes were saying so more freely. Ann Coulter, a conservative firebrand and occasional Fox News commentator, said: “I have better details than that, from every woman who has ever been employed by Fox, which I have not.”

Attorneys for Carlson now say more than 20 women have contacted their law firm to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment, not including several women who have spoken anonymously to the press.

Hours before Ailes’s exit became public, another former Fox News host appeared to add her name to the roster. Laurie Dhue, a Fox News anchor from 2000 to 2008, floated news of a tell-all book about Ailes through her attorney.

“She is in the process of writing a book in which she will candidly discuss her years at Fox News and her interactions and communications with Mr Ailes and many other Fox News personalities, her involuntary departure from Fox News and her lack of success in continuing her career in the television news industry following her departure from Fox News,” the attorney said.

Ailes is now exiting with a potential $40m payout, a straight line connecting allegations of his lurid behavior to his downfall.

But Carlson was not the first woman to accuse Ailes of sexual misconduct. The former model who claims she was ordered by Ailes to “kiss” his genitals had made several attempts to tell her story to news outlets in the past decade.

And in his 2014 biography of Ailes, Sherman quoted a television producer, Randi Harrison, as claiming Ailes had offered her a higher salary in exchange for sex during an NBC job interview. “If you agree to have sex with me whenever I want, I will add an extra hundred dollars a week,” Harrison claims Ailes said. He allegedly ended the interview with a hug. “I was in tears by the time I hit the street.”