The Ex-CEO of J. Walter Thompson Makes a Rape Joke in a Newly Released Video

AWXII - Day 2
NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 29: J. Walter Thompson Company Worldwide Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Gustavo Martinez poses at the The Latino Spring panel during Advertising Week 2015 AWXII at the Times Center Stage on September 29, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by D Dipasupil/Getty Images for AWXII)
D Dipasupil—Getty Images for AWXII

The former CEO of ad agency J. Walter Thompson stepped down last month after the company’s chief communications officer Erin Johnson sued him for discrimination and accused him of making sexist, anti-Semitic, and racial slurs against company employees.

On Thursday, a video of Martinez making a rape joke during a company meeting surfaced online. It was released by the law firm of Vladeck, Raskin & Clark—which represents Johnson—after a federal district judge ruled that it could be entered into evidence, according to Adweek.

In the video, Martinez is seen making a joke about being raped in the elevator of a hotel in which he and his colleagues were staying, “and not in a nice way,” he says. You can watch the video here.

In Johnson’s suit, she also claims Martinez said multiple times that certain women should “shut up [their] mouths” and that a female executive needed to be “hogtied” and “raped into submission.” The lawsuit also claims that Martinez called African Americans “monkeys” and that he complained about this hometown of Westchester because there were “too many Jews.”

 

In response to the claims, Martinez has said “there is absolutely no truth to these outlandish allegations.” Davis & Gilbert, LLP, the law firm representing Martinez, JWT, and JWT’s parent company WPP, declined Fortune‘s request for comment.

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