Six women who worked in the office of Judge Alex Kozinski, a member of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, have accused him of sexual misconduct, according to a report published Friday evening.
Two women spoke on the record with the Washington Post, while the four others would not allow their names to be shared.
One of the women, Heidi Bond, said the judge showed her porn on multiple occasions, including pictures of naked college-aged students at a party and a flipbook which a woman’s naked body parts had to be matched up to the corresponding bodies. She said she worked as a clerk for Kozinski from 2006 to 2007.
Emily Murphy alleged Kozinski once tried to convince her and other clerks to work out while naked after she mentioned that the court’s gym appeared to regularly be used by employees.
An unidentified woman said Kozinski looked her up and down “in a less-than-professional way,” and discussed a female judge stripping.
Another woman who claims to have worked as a clerk for Kozinski said she was dining with the judge when he “kind of picked the tablecloth up so that he could see the bottom half of me, my legs.” She said he defended the move at the time as having “wanted to see if you were wearing pants because it’s cold out.”
The six women all said they did not report the incidents at the time they occurred.
“I mean, who would I tell?” Bond said. “Who do you even tell? Who do you go to?”
Kozinski, who served as the circuit’s chief judge from 2007 to 2014, issued a statement to the Post late Friday stating he would “never intentionally do anything to offend anyone.”
“I have been a judge for 35 years and during that time have had over 500 employees in my chambers,” the judge said. “I treat all of my employees as family and work very closely with most of them. I would never intentionally do anything to offend anyone and it is regrettable that a handful have been offended by something I may have said or done.”
