"Google Covers up Harassment and Passes the Trash': a Google Engineer Gave Her Employer Both Barrels after an Explosive Sexual Misconduct Report

By Isobel Asher Hamilton
Business Insider
October 26, 2018

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apos-google-covers-harassment-passes-105957937.html

Andy Rubin at wired business conference

Getty Images for Wired

A Google engineer has savaged the company's culture of sexual misconduct and harassment following an explosive report in The New York Times.

In a series of tweets, Liz Fong-Jones slammed Google senior managers for their "abuse of power relationships" after Android creator Rubin was accused of resigning with a $90 million exit package after a woman came forward saying he coerced her into oral sex in a hotel room.

"It is not okay to assault people. It is not okay to cheat. It is not okay to sexually harass. What's salacious about the NYT article is *not* the BDSM or the polyamory," Fong-Jones tweeted following the publication of the Times report. "It's the abuse of power relationships in situations where there was no consent, or consent was impossible."

It built on comments Fong-Jones made to the New York Times as part of its report.

"When Google covers up harassment and passes the trash, it contributes to an environment where people don’t feel safe reporting misconduct," the workplace equality advocate said. "They suspect that nothing will happen or, worse, that the men will be paid and the women will be pushed aside."

Fong-Jones also told her own #MeToo story about a Google executive. She reposted a Google+ blog she wrote in 2017, in which recalled sleeping with a director who "got very creative to maneuver past the letter of limits I set."

She named that director on Twitter as Richard DeVaul, who heads up Google's research and development arm Google X. DeVaul was also named in the Times piece, where it is alleged he behaved inappropriately towards a hardware engineer applying for a job at Google. In a statement to the Times, he apologized for an "error of judgment."

Business Insider contacted DeVaul and Google for comment.