The longstanding and public fight between the Washington Post and a reporter allegedly barred from covering #MeToo-adjacent stories after she declared herself a sexual assault survivor spilled into court on Thursday.
The longstanding and public fight between the Washington Post and a reporter allegedly barred from covering #MeToo-adjacent stories after she declared herself a sexual assault survivor spilled into court on Thursday. Filed in Superior Court in Washington, D.C., Felicia Sonmez’s lawsuit alleges five counts of discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environment, and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The newspaper, its former executive editor Marty Baron and several current editors there are named as defendants. “Not all survivors publicly share their stories,” Sonmez noted in a statement. “But all survivors of trauma, including sexual assault, deserve the full support of their newsrooms. They should never have to fear that they will be punished, silenced or barred from doing their jobs because of what was done to them.” Sonmez, a national political reporter for the paper, claims that she was kept away from some of the most high-profile stories on her beat after announcing that the Los Angeles Times ex-Beijing bureau chief Jonathan Kaiman sexually assaulted her in 2017. She decided to go public after another woman, Texas-based law student Laura Tucker, wrote a Medium post with similar allegations against Kaiman. Those claims ultimately led to Kaiman’s resignation in 2018.
