According to Insider, the world’s richest man exposed his penis to a SpaceX flight attendant and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage
According to a new report published by Insider, Elon Musk’s aerospace firm SpaceX paid a flight attendant $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Musk in 2018.
The attendant was a contract cabin crew member for SpaceX’s corporate fleet. She has alleged that Musk exposed his erect penis, rubbed her leg without consent, and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.
The information about the incident, which allegedly occurred in 2016, was included as part of a declaration from a friend of the attendant which was prepared to support her claim. According to the declaration, the attendant revealed to her friend that after taking the job, she was encouraged to get licensed as a masseuse so she could give Musk massages. She did so, and began giving Musk regular massages.
The attendant told her friend that it was during one of these massages that Musk propositioned her. According to the declaration, on one occasion Musk asked her to come to his room during a flight “for a full body massage”. When she came in, the attendant found that Musk was “completely naked” except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body. Later, Musk “exposed his genitals”, “touched her”, and “offered to buy her a horse if she would ‘do more,’ referring to the performance of sex acts.”
The attendant declined the offer.
“He whipped out his penis, it was erect,” the friend of the attendant said in an interview with Insider. “And he started propositioning her, like he touched her thigh and told her he would buy her a horse. And he basically tried to bribe her to perform some sort of sexual favour.”
“She figured things could just go back to normal and she would pretend like nothing happened,” the friend said. “However, she started to feel as if she was receiving some sort of retaliation where her shifts were cut back, and she was starting to feel really stressed.” The declaration says the attendant felt “she was being pushed out and punished for refusing to prostitute herself.”
In 2018, the attendant hired a California employment lawyer and sent a complaint to the company’s HR department. In November 2018, Musk, SpaceX and the flight attendant entered into a severance agreement granting the attendant a $250,000 payment in exchange for a promise not to sue over the claims.
Finally, we get to use Elongate as scandal name. It’s kinda perfect. 🤣 https://t.co/qSNH7lsn72
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022
The agreement also included restrictive non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses that forbid the attendant from ever discussing the severance payment or disclosing any information of any kind about Musk and his businesses.
After Insider contacted Musk for comment, he emailed to ask for more time to respond and said there is “a lot more to this story.”
“If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light,” he wrote. He went on to call the story a “politically motivated hit piece.” When Insider extended the deadline and reiterated the offer to Musk to comment on the claims, he did not respond.
Musk has been characteristically blasé about the claims on Twitter, retweeting one of his posts from 2021 where he wrote: “If there’s ever a scandal about me, *please* call it Elongate”.