Biglaw Firm Throws Partner Under the Bus After Fox News Appearance
Mercedes Colwin, managing partner of Gordon & Rees’s New York office and Fox News analyst, apologized for saying on a broadcast that women who claim to be victims of sexual harassment and assault usually do so for money, but she lost her management role anyway.
Newsweek reports that Colwin apologized on Twitter, saying she hadn’t meant to “trivialize or minimize the impact of sexual harassment on any victims. … I did not mean to imply, nor do I believe, that the victims of sexual assault within society are ‘very few and far between.”
Above the Law quoted from the firm’s statement: “The partner in question has voluntarily stepped down from all management roles within the firm and she is committed to rectifying the hurtful impressions created by her remarks.”
The firm’s statement also says:
[T]he organization in no way endorses or agrees with any statements which could even remotely be interpreted as minimizing or trivializing the seriousness and gravity of sexual harassment or similarly predatory behaviors, and we renounce them in the strongest possible terms – in fact, contrary to what may have been inferred from what was said during the telecast, the sad reality is that the number of women who likely have not been exposed to such repugnant conduct over the course of their personal or professional lives is, unfortunately, few and far between.
