Former ESPN-anchor Adrienne Lawrence has filed a sexual harassment and discrimination against ESPN for incidents dating back to 2015, according to a report in the New York Post. ESPN is being accused of not addressing her complaints. The main complaint centers around “SportsCenter” host John Buccigross but others, including current WWE announcer Jonathan Coachman, are being accused of varying degrees of harassment.
She alleges that Coachman reached out to her on the pretense of mentorship but he tried to turn that into a personal relationship and Lawrence says that her colleagues had advised her that Coachman has sexually harassed female employees.
The suit says, “After learning that, Ms. Lawrence made an effort to communicate to Coachman that she had a boyfriend, after which she did not hear from him again.”
ESPN’s human resources department is the main target of the lawsuit. The allegation is that they frequently ignored Lawrence’s complaints.
“We conducted a thorough investigation of the claims Adrienne Lawrence surfaced to ESPN and they are entirely without merit,” ESPN said in a statement. “Ms. Lawrence was hired into a two-year talent development program and was told that her contract would not be renewed at the conclusion of the training program. At that same time, ESPN also told 100 other talent with substantially more experience, that their contracts would not be renewed. The company will vigorously defend its position and we are confident we will prevail in court.”
The lawsuit claims that ESPN HR “colluded with Buccigross to cover up his misconduct.”
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