The three woman also noted that there was no punishment for some of the alleged abuse. One of those former interns who later worked there as a full-time engineer, Ashley Kosak, wrote in an essay that a male intern groped her in 2017 as she was handling dishes at a company-owned house where the interns lived. A male colleague put his hand up Kosak’s torso at a company event the following year, she alleged.
Despite reporting the 2017 incident to her manager and the 2018 one to SpaceX’s HR department, she said she never received responses from either. “Given my tenuous position at the company, I felt powerless,” Kosak wrote.
SpaceX did not respond to the The Times' comment request. But in an email sent to staff December 11, Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer, said the company would start internal and independent audits of its HR department.
“Timely reporting of harassment is key to our maintaining SpaceX as a great place to work; we can’t fix what we don’t know,” Shotwell said in the email, a copy of which The Times obtained. She added that SpaceX would “rigorously investigate all harassment or discrimination claims and take rapid and appropriate action when we find our policy is violated.”