Fifteen female employees who used to work for the Washington NFL team said they were sexually harassed while working for the Daniel Snyder-owned organization.
In a lengthy story in the Washington Post released Thursday, Emily Applegate, who worked in the team's marketing department for a year, and 14 other women, who talked to The Post on the condition of anonymity due to fear of legal reprisals, alleged that Washington cultivated a culture of "relentless sexual harassment and verbal abuse that was ignored -- and, in some cases, condoned -- by top team executives."
The team told The Post in a statement that it had hired an outside attorney "to conduct a thorough independent review" of the allegations and "help the team set new employee standards for the future." Snyder declined several interview requests, according to the report.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Bay Area and California sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
Washington announced earlier this week that it would change its team name, no longer using the R-word amid pressure from sponsors Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo. -- and following social-media and letter-writing campaigns from Indigenous- and Native-led organizations directed at those same companies -- calling for the team to stop using it. National and local reporters then openly -- and, sometimes, vaguely -- said that the name change wouldn't be the only news to come out of the team's Ashburn, Va. headquarters, referring to The Post's eventual report.
Washington announced three organizational changes earlier this week, which The Post reported only happened after the outlet "presented detailed allegations and findings to the club."
Play-by-play announcer Larry Michael retired Wednesday, while pro personnel director Alex Santos and assistant director of pro personnel Richard Mann II were fired earlier this week ahead of the story's publication. All three men allegedly made objectifying comments and inappropriate advances towards female colleagues, and two reporters accused Santos of "making inappropriate remarks about their bodies and asking them if they were romantically interested in him."
Two other former high-ranking Washington employees were named in The Post's report, both of whom had close ties to Snyder while with Washington.
San Francisco 49ers
Find the latest San Francisco 49ers news, highlights, analysis and more with NBC Sports Bay Area and California.
Dennis Greene, Washington's former president of business operations, and former chief operating officer Mitch Gershman were also accused by multiple former employees of harassment. Five employees told The Post that Greene, who resigned from the team in 2018 after The New York Times reported he attended a Washington cheerleaders' calendar photoshoot trip to Costa Rica in which the cheerleaders said they were told to be escorts for team sponsors, told his female employees to "wear low-cut blouses, tight skirts and flirt with wealthy suite holders." Multiple former female employees, meanwhile, backed Applegate's account that Gershman verbally abused and sexually harassed her.
Neither Snyder nor former longtime team president Bruce Allen, who was fired in 2019, were accused of harassment. Those who spoke to The Post blamed the owner for creating a culture in which top executives -- allegedly, including Snyder himself -- often insulted and denigrated one another and, later, their employees. Applegate said she assumed Allen was aware of the harassment she faced, given their proximity to one another.
“I would assume Bruce [Allen] knew, because he sat 30 feet away from me … and saw me sobbing at my desk several times every week,” Applegate told The Post.