Third Accuser: Ken Baker Groped Me After Playboy Party, E-Mailed ‘Borrowing Viagra From Hef’

Woman says E! News correspondent groped and tried to kiss her when he was West Coast editor at Us Weekly. Baker denies it

Ken Baker screenshot

Ken Baker, the subject of a sexual harassment investigation at E! News, now has a new accuser: A woman said he touched her inappropriately and groped her after a 2006 party at the Playboy Mansion.

The woman, who started as an intern at Us Weekly in 2003 and was later a freelance reporter for the magazine, shared an email with TheWrap in which Baker invited her to the Dec. 2, 2006 Playboy party: “I’m telling my friends your ‘covering’ the party… lol… should be fun. Borrowing viagra from Hef.” (See image.)

Baker responded in a statement to TheWrap: “Harassment allegations are to be taken very seriously. That said, I’ve never touched anyone inappropriately — ever. Any suggestion otherwise is pure fiction. The anonymous allegations are simply not true, and, frankly, are heartbreaking to hear.”

E! News pulled Baker from the airwaves Thursday night after two women anonymously spoke to TheWrap about him. An ex-E! News employee said he made suggestive comments, touched her uncomfortably and once invited her to sit on his lap. An ex-intern says he kissed her without consent, texted her to ask for sex for years, and offered to give her a “a Tiffany dildo with ‘Ken Baker’ engraved on the shaft.”

The new accuser is the third woman to speak with TheWrap about Baker. She said when she became an intern, Baker, Us Weekly’s West Coast editor at the time, would invite her to talk about her career in his office.

Ken Baker“It would turn into him basically asking for details about my personal life. He would ask about my sex life in particular,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “When he could come talk to me he would sit right next me, getting close and closer. … I went along with it because I wanted a future at the magazine.”

She said he repeatedly touched her in his office in ways that made her uncomfortable: “He kind of like put his hand on my waist and kind of leaned in to kiss me,” she said. She said she always dodged.

She told TheWrap she never spoke out because she was worried about hurting her career, and was still afraid to use her name.

“He never verbally told me that if you sleep with me you’ll get that job. But it was pretty much unspoken that you’re going to get a job if you let me do these things.”

Ken Baker Carmen Electra
Baker with Carmen Electra at Dec 2 2006 Playboy party (Getty Images)

After the party, the limo took several people to the Mondrian Hotel. She had had a couple of drinks, and he appeared to be drunk, she said.

“He just completely started groping me and trying to make out with me…. He, with both of his hands, he kind of grabbed my waist and moved down to my rear,” she said. “He was caressing it. I physically pushed him back.”

She added: “What I mean by groped is touched and caressed. He was moving his hand around it. It wasn’t like a tap on the butt. It was like, ‘I’m firmly grabbing it.’”

She said Baker would often refer to himself as “Daddy,” and that the month after the party, in January 2007, he sent her an email that read “WHO’S YOUR DADDY.” (See image, above.)

TheWrap spoke with another journalist who was at the Playboy party and says she saw the woman at the hotel afterward looking “unhappy or very uncomfortable.”

“I one-hundred percent believe her,” she said. “That memory of seeing this look on her face is very vivid in my memory to this day.”

Months after the party, in September 2007, Baker’s former No. 2 at Us Weekly, Jill Ishkanian, sued him and others at the magazine. Her lawsuit accused him of hiring his children’s nanny as a reporter and texting the young woman, “I want to have sex with you,” and “I want to see you pregnant with pigtails.” He was hired by E! News a year later, and the lawsuit was dismissed in 2009.

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