Final week, Julie Stewart-Binks sat in an empty lounge on the rooftop of a lodge close to her condo in New York Metropolis. She is about to observe a clip from her time as a Fox Sports activities host and reporter. It’s a second that she thinks about typically, however one which she has by no means wished to relive in full. She hits play on the video, then her arms jerk again towards her chest, as if bracing for a blow.
Within the clip, Stewart-Binks, then a 28-year-old Fox Sports activities 1 on-air character, is on the set of a pop-up present – “Jason Whitlock’s Home Occasion By the Bay” – for the 2016 Tremendous Bowl in San Francisco. The set is supposed to evoke a Tremendous Bowl occasion. Crimson Solo cups. Beers chilling in an ice bucket on the espresso desk. Whitlock and the day’s visitor – New England Patriots tight finish Rob Gronkowski – are behind a desk; Stewart-Binks is on a grey sofa flanking them.
The group is discussing Gronkowski’s disclosure that he moonlighted as a stripper in school. Stewart-Binks then says: “If in case you have an opportunity to make some extra money, utilizing perhaps me for example, do you need to present us slightly ‘Magic Mike?’” (A reference to the 2012 film about male unique dancers.) Gronkowski, slightly stunned, asks Stewart-Binks if she desires a lap dance, to which she replies: “Yeah.” Gronkowski appears to be stalling. He asks about music and remarks: “The place are your folks? I would wish, like, a bachelorette occasion?” Stewart-Binks retains urging him on, as does Whitlock, and Gronkowski finally strikes from behind the desk, over to the sofa. He dances briefly in entrance of Stewart-Binks, then straddles her and thrusts his hips towards her, grinding on her because the cameras roll. Stewart-Binks, laughing, takes out some crumpled greenback payments and arms them to Gronkowski. The dancing lasts about six seconds.
As she watches the clip, Stewart-Binks’ face reddens and her chest breaks out in hives. She begins to cry. “I’ll spend my complete life making an attempt to make up for this,” she says, wiping away tears with a shaking hand. “I’ll die making an attempt to make up for this second that’s clearly not who I’m.”
The Gronkowski section was the defining second in Stewart-Binks’ 4 years at FS1 (2013-16). Because the clip unfold throughout the web, FS1 was derided as a “circus act,” however Stewart-Binks took the brunt of the criticism. She was accused of setting again the efforts of girls working in sports activities journalism and betraying feminism totally. A number of the criticism got here from pals and colleagues.
Now, she desires these critics to know why she participated within the section, and offering that context requires sharing what she says occurred to her within the days beforehand.
On Friday, Stewart-Binks, 37, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court docket towards Fox and Charlie Dixon, an govt vp and head of content material at Fox Sports activities and FS1, the corporate’s sports activities community. In that lawsuit, she alleges that a few week earlier than the Gronkowski section she was sexually assaulted by Dixon throughout a gathering at a lodge that he organized below the auspices of speaking about her Tremendous Bowl week duties. Dixon can be a defendant in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by former FS1 hairstylist Noushin Faraji. In Faraji’s grievance, she claimed that “executives and expertise have been allowed to bodily and verbally abuse staff with impunity,” and she or he alleged that Dixon groped her at a co-worker’s celebration in January 2017, amongst different allegations.
Dixon didn’t reply to textual content, voice and e-mail messages searching for remark. Fox Sports activities mentioned in a press release: “These allegations are from over eight years in the past. On the time, we promptly employed a third-party agency to analyze and addressed the matter based mostly on their findings.”
Days after the alleged assault, when producers in San Francisco instructed her that FS1 wished a viral second out of Gronkowski, she mentioned she by no means thought-about the implications of the stunt, solely what would occur if she refused with Dixon watching from the set. “I used to be in a extremely f—ed-up place that I couldn’t inform folks about,” she mentioned.
In her grievance, Stewart-Binks mentioned she detailed the allegations towards Dixon to a Fox human sources official in 2017 however that Fox “egregiously made the deliberate determination to guard Dixon and permit a sexual predator to stay an govt at Fox for practically a decade.”
“They knew and didn’t do something about it,” Stewart-Binks mentioned in an interview earlier this month. “It meant they didn’t care concerning the harm finished to me and the way it affected others.” She then added: “This has been accepted for therefore lengthy. I’m sitting right here wanting it to be totally different.”
Fox Sports activities govt vp Charlie Dixon in 2018. (Travis P. Ball / Getty Photographs)
Stewart-Binks grew up in Toronto, and her mom was a broadcast reporter and her father labored within the medical system trade. She performed proper wing on a boys’ home league hockey staff and in addition skilled as a determine skater and a cellist.
She attended Queen’s College and obtained levels in each drama and bodily and well being training however developed a ardour for broadcasting and later received a grasp’s diploma in worldwide broadcast journalism from what’s now often known as Metropolis St George’s, College of London.
Her entry into sports activities journalism in Canada was scrappy and unglamorous. She coated Ontario Hockey League video games on a volunteer foundation, staying at a buddy’s home in Kingston, then taking a bus to Niagara, the place she’d bunk together with her grandmother in a retirement neighborhood. Later, as a reporter and anchor for CTV in Regina, Saskatchewan, she drove throughout the Canadian prairies capturing and modifying sports activities tv packages on curling and anchoring the nightly newscasts. To save cash, she lived out of a buddy’s basement.
In 2013, she was plucked out of relative obscurity by an agent at Octagon (the late John Ferriter) and flown to Los Angeles to fulfill with Fox Sports activities executives and display screen check for the launch of FS1. She was employed by the fledgling community as an replace anchor and went on to host “Fox Soccer Day by day.” She additionally labored as a sideline reporter for Main League Soccer, hosted FS1’s protection of the 2014 Winter Olympics and coated the 2015 FIFA Girls’s World Cup. She spent 65 days on the street that summer time and was tabbed as one in every of Terrible Asserting’s “Rising Stars.”
However, in line with her grievance, by early 2016, her allies inside FS1 — executives like Scott Ackerson and Rick Jaffe — had departed and a brand new regime — Dixon and fellow govt Jamie Horowitz — have been in place with a brand new imaginative and prescient for the community.
Stewart-Binks nonetheless preferred her job. She received to cowl soccer and hockey – sports activities she cherished – and work as an anchor and a bunch. She was a part of a tight-knit group that helped launch FS1. However her future was unsure. The community had till April 1, 2016, to select up a one-year possibility in her contract. If it didn’t, she would lose a high-profile job. She felt she wanted to point out the Dixon-Horowitz regime that she was a flexible and dynamic expertise.
When Whitlock requested her to be part of his present in the course of the 2016 Tremendous Bowl week, she felt she had a gap to do this. After which Dixon requested her to come back to his lodge, writing that he wished to “go over expectation(s)” earlier than a bunch assembly the following day, in line with her grievance. After receiving that textual content, Stewart-Binks shared her pleasure with a buddy about getting face time together with her boss and curated her outfit for the assembly – a suede jacket and designer heels – hoping to convey model and professionalism.
The lawsuit units out intimately how they met on the bar at a lodge in Marina del Rey, Calif. She ordered a single glass of white wine. Dixon requested what she had been instructed about her function on Whitlock’s present throughout Tremendous Bowl week. He then instructed her he didn’t assume she must be going to the Tremendous Bowl in any respect and that she was ill-suited to host and wasn’t humorous or fascinating or gifted sufficient to attract in viewers.
In an interview, Stewart-Binks mentioned she was shocked and confused by Dixon’s remarks. Why was he denigrating her so strongly, and, simply earlier than she went on an necessary project for the community? She tried to remain calm, even when he remarked, in line with the grievance, that the one means anybody can be keen to observe her was if she “received up on this bar and took your high off” after which added: “You’re not sizzling sufficient to be a sizzling woman on TV.” She mentioned in her interview with The Athletic that she responded to Dixon: “I didn’t get my grasp’s diploma in ‘sizzling woman.’”
Stewart-Binks mentioned Dixon’s tone then modified. He stopped criticizing her and requested about her skilled aspirations. The grievance states that Dixon then ordered two beers from the bar and urged her to come back to his room and drink them, including that he had a fantastic view from his balcony. She didn’t assume it was a good suggestion, she mentioned in her interview and within the grievance, however she felt she couldn’t say no to her boss.
“You’ve gotten autonomy over your self to say ‘no’ and depart. However you don’t, and also you say ‘sure’ as a result of he held the facility to every little thing,” Stewart-Binks instructed The Athletic.
The authorized grievance describes Dixon’s shirts – colourful tees with slogans and photos – laid out on one of many beds in his room. Dixon prompt they step out on the balcony. As soon as outdoors, Dixon, in line with the grievance, “swiftly pushed her towards the wall of the lodge and pinned her arms to her aspect. Together with her arms forcefully held down and his physique pressed towards hers, Dixon tried to power his tongue into her mouth.” Stewart-Binks’ mouth remained shut however Dixon “ignored her, persevering with to press towards her physique and lick her closed mouth. Whereas preserving one in every of her arms pinned, he moved his different arm from urgent her higher elbow towards the wall to her physique and in direction of her chest. Stewart-Binks seized the second of partial freedom to push him away, say ‘get off of me’ and quickly depart the lodge room.”
As soon as in her automobile, she referred to as the identical buddy with whom she had earlier shared her pleasure about assembly with Dixon. “I bear in mind getting a really upset cellphone name,” the buddy instructed The Athletic. “It was the general disappointment of ‘I can’t consider an govt did this.’” Stewart-Binks later referred to as her mom, in line with the grievance, and the 2 girls concluded that it might imperil her profession if she spoke out about what Dixon had allegedly finished.
Stewart-Binks went again to work frightened concerning the implications of heading off Dixon and in addition what his remarks about her lack of expertise meant for her profession going ahead. At a gathering the day after the alleged assault, she mentioned Dixon ignored her. She believed her future was “very a lot hanging within the stability” as she arrived in San Francisco for Tremendous Bowl week. Her nervousness was ramped up by producers there who have been hell-bent to “make a second” that might garner consideration, she mentioned.
“I used to be instructed … that I used to be not able to with the ability to do a second like this on tv. And that I used to be not fascinating, humorous, gifted, sensible. And so I felt the necessity to show that I used to be all in, and that I used to be not scared to do one thing like (the Gronkowski stunt). Had I not (finished it), I’d have felt like I failed and that I’d have confirmed what (Dixon) instructed me.”
The response to her function within the Gronkowski section stunned and stung her, she mentioned in an interview. Individuals she knew within the trade, some whom she thought-about pals, have been amongst these voicing their disappointment together with her option to take part. Her co-worker and buddy, Katie Nolan, instructed GQ that she disapproved of the bit. (Nolan later apologized to Stewart-Binks in a podcast and clarified her remarks.) Stewart-Binks recalled receiving a textual content message from Grant Wahl, the late Sports activities Illustrated soccer author she admired, that learn: “That’s not who you’re.”
Fox promoted the Gronkowski section on social media and elsewhere. The community received its viral second. However when the backlash grew robust sufficient, Fox stopped, and the identical males within the manufacturing assembly desperate to “make a second” went largely silent. Stewart-Binks’ bosses didn’t tackle the incident at size till six weeks later; Horowitz mentioned at the moment that he was supportive of Stewart-Binks for doing a “enjoyable bit” and thought Gronkowski “perhaps … took it a half step too far.”
In her lawsuit, Stewart-Binks mentioned the community instructed her to not touch upon the incident, and her company, CAA, suggested her to journey it out. Lower than two months after the Tremendous Bowl, Stewart-Binks was knowledgeable that Fox wouldn’t choose up her contract possibility with one govt telling her that there was “nothing for her to do right here,” in line with the grievance.
Based on the grievance, Stewart-Binks was contacted by a Fox human sources official in June 2017 and requested about Horowitz’s habits when Stewart-Binks labored at Fox Sports activities. Stewart-Binks didn’t have something substantive to share about Horowitz, however the grievance states that she disclosed to the HR official what Dixon allegedly mentioned to her of their January 2016 assembly and what allegedly occurred in his lodge room afterward.
Horowitz was fired following the probe, however Dixon remained on the firm.
After Fox, Stewart-Binks labored as a part-time soccer reporter for ESPN, a rinkside reporter for NHL on TNT, a bunch for BetRivers Sportsbook Community, did stand-up comedy, was a bunch for the CBC’s 2024 Olympic protection, amongst different jobs. She’s continued to scrap to search out work however believes the Gronkowski section has impacted her skill to get different jobs.
When the Faraji lawsuit towards Fox and Dixon was filed, Stewart-Binks acquired textual content messages from folks she had instructed about her interactions with Dixon. On web page eight of the 42-page grievance, there’s a reference to a bunch who reported Dixon to the corporate. She believed that Faraji, with whom she labored at FS1, was referencing her. Studying about what Faraji allegedly endured was a “tipping level,” Stewart-Binks mentioned. “I didn’t need to maintain onto it anymore.”
Stewart-Binks mentioned she has skilled bouts of self-doubt since leaving Fox Sports activities, Dixon’s criticism of her skills nonetheless ringing in her ears. “I had a distinct view of what my life can be like than what it’s. And I’m very grateful for every little thing I’ve. However generally I believe … effectively, what might my life have been had this not occurred?”
(Prime photograph: Hatnim Lee for The Athletic)