The co-founder of the San Francisco tech company Tradeshift is accused of subjecting a former assistant to years of “unwanted sexual horror" after forcing her to sign a "slave contract," The Mercury News reported.
A lawsuit filed on Thursday alleges that Christian Lanng forced the woman, only identified in court documents as Jane Doe, to sign the contract just months after she was hired.
Doe claims Lanng abused her for years, including “inflicting physical pain on her by various means, urinating on her and routinely penetrating her person with foreign objects."
Lanng was fired earlier this year as CEO for “gross misconduct on multiple grounds” after management learned about “serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment” against him.
Doe claims she was fired in 2020 after she complained to human resources about the "contract," which demanded that she “always be sexually available for her master when he needs sex and to never refuse him sex even when not wearing the [day] collar."
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“Whenever she sees her master in private for the first time, she is to kneel and ask if there is anything she can do for him,” the contract allegedly stated.
It also allegedly allowed Lanng to deliver “any punishment the master decides to inflict, whether earned or not" — although it stated that it was his responsibility to avoid killing her — and added that she must accept her punishments “without being angry, sullen or frustrated with her master."
She must “thank him after," it said.
According to the lawsuit, Lanng allegedly “beat her to the point of bleeding” and violated her with “inanimate objects."
In a statement to The New York Post, Lanng denied the allegations and said the relationship between the two was consensual.
“The claims in this lawsuit are defamatory and not reflective of my past relationship with the plaintiff. The shocking and vile claims in the lawsuit are categorically false, and I reject allegations that I subjected someone to any form of abuse during my tenure as CEO or at any other time of my life,” he said.
