Google engineer Liz Fong-Jones says the firm ‘covers up harassment’

Android creator and former
Google executive Andy Rubin.
Getty
Images for Wired

• An explosive
  New York Times report has delved into allegations of sexual
  misconduct at Google.
• Engineer Liz Fong-Jones told the newspaper that Google
  “covers up harassment,” and tweet stormed more details after
  the piece was published.
• Fong-Jones said that one of the executives named by the
  Times was the director she referred to in a #MeToo blog about
  sexual assault last year.

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.

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