A Chance to Speak

This article appears in the December 2023 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.

When Katie Anderson formed a limited-liability company in Northglenn, Colorado, to support her insurance sales business, she named it Kalaco. That stood for “Katie Anderson Loves Aflac Company.” Like the vast majority of Aflac’s workforce, Katie was technically not an employee; she was a 1099 independent contractor. But you wouldn’t know it from speaking to her.

Anderson was enthusiastic about Aflac from the moment she interviewed for a position in 2010. “The two things that they really sell everybody on and sold me on was the idea of running your own business and growing your own company,” Katie told me. “And then the other thing they lean into: ‘You are a part of something so great. This is the world’s most ethical company.’”

Some people just have a personality for sales, like Katie, a California transplant who got her start selling memberships at fitness clubs. Her husband Jason would say that she “didn’t understand how people could feel depressed. She thought depression was like a choice, and she just thought, why do that when you can choose to be happy?”

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Katie rose from an entry-level associate to a district and then regional sales coordinator, running an office with 40 agents. The team she put together, which included Jason, at one point opened up more accounts than any of Aflac’s 3,000 districts across the country, she said. Katie made “President’s Club,” a prestigious award for sales agents, four times. Managers and subordinates praised her performance. “She was a leader, organized, thorough, knew her stuff,” said Charia Anderson (no relation), who worked for Katie at her Denver-area office.

In August 2018, Katie was asked to attend an invitation-only meeting of regional sales coordinators in St. Louis, Missouri, called Galaxy Group. She hoped it would propel her into a market director role, which carried responsibility over more territory and, importantly, employee status. “I really knew where my career was going and what I was going to do,” she told me.

Almost five years later, in May, Katie was on a witness stand, testifying in a civil case against an Aflac business development director, Jeffrey Hansen, whom she accused of raping her in a hotel room during that Galaxy Group event. Less than a year after the assault, she would no longer be selling for Aflac.

Katie aimed to become a model for other women who may not understand their rights as workers and how fleeting they can be.

You shouldn’t know this story, and I shouldn’t be able to tell it to you. For decades, the prime strategy of corporations when it came to sexual misconduct in the workplace was to sweep it under the rug. Since the #MeToo movement began, we’ve heard lurid details about famous abusers like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. But employers eager to avoid bad publicity go to great lengths to suppress lower-profile misconduct that happens inside their companies. They reach settlements with victims that include nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreements. They quietly sideline perpetrators. They establish accountability on their terms, with the priority of protecting the company.

The only reason I can report on Katie’s case is that the confidential settlement she and Jason reached with Aflac specifically allowed for future litigation against Jeffrey Hansen. The Andersons then filed a civil suit, after prosecutors in St. Louis declined to bring criminal charges. The trial allowed Katie to publicly discuss the incident, a rarity in workplace cases where the employer exhibits so much control.

At trial, Katie testified about the anguish and emptiness in the days and years after the assault. “I loved what I did with Aflac so much,” she said. “I never wanted to do anything else … I fully understand what it feels like to be broken and feel like worthless, and suicidal, and all of these things.”

Last year, Congress passed two laws, preventing companies from blocking access to courts and invalidating certain nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases. The measures, which extend to 1099 workers like Katie, were intended to bring sexual assault in the workplace out from the shadows. But re-exposing oneself to the abuse can often sound more attractive as an option than in reality.

Katie told me that she aimed to become a model for other women who may not understand their rights as workers and how fleeting they can be, especially as independent contractors. “There are so many 1099s that come into the insurance industry and financial services,” Katie told me. “They don’t know that if they are assaulted, they have no help.”

KATIE WAS WORKING ON ABOUT THREE HOURS of sleep when she boarded an early flight from Denver to St. Louis on August 29, 2018. Two other regional sales coordinators from Colorado, Laura Marcotte and Aspen Madrid, were invited to Galaxy Group with her, and after landing they all decided to have lunch. Katie saw Marcotte and Madrid as work acquaintances, not friends. She previously worked for Marcotte, leaving after she was promoted and taking some of Marcotte’s agents for her team; there was some tension there. All three women worked with their spouses at Aflac, and at lunch they talked about the stresses of that. Katie noticed that in the rush to leave for the airport, she had forgotten her wedding ring.

Galaxy Group started with a four-hour meeting at the Aflac offices across the street from their hotel, a Courtyard by Marriott. Afterward, a bus would take them to dinner. In the hotel lobby, Katie had a glass of cabernet, which was common at these events. “The number one thing is alcohol, there is a nonstop flow of alcohol at all times,” said Jessie Minardi, a former Aflac agent from Omaha, Nebraska, who was not on that trip but has been to other Aflac gatherings. Another former longtime agent who asked for anonymity repeated a joke inside the company that Aflac stood for “Alcoholic finally lands a career.”

Katie was not a big drinker; she trained for bodybuilding and marathons and met her husband, a former Coast Guard enlistee, when they both worked at a gym. She knew Jeffrey Hansen, a W-2 employee at Aflac, through a few work interactions. A week prior, she had met with him and his son, who was deciding where to start as an entry-level associate. It was the kind of thing that triggered Katie’s competitive nature; she even produced a recruiting video hyping up her team. Katie testified that at dinner, she texted Hansen, asking if his son had made a decision yet. Hansen, who was across the room, called out: “Katie, he decided to join your team.” He beckoned her over to celebrate. (Hansen testified something different, that he found out from Katie that Luke was joining her team.)

They had dinner and drinks and talked about the Colorado office. Hansen later claimed that Katie mentioned her missing wedding ring and alluded to marital problems, which Katie denied; she and Jason were reviewing fertility treatments to have a second child at the time. One witness, Marcotte, described Katie and Hansen as flirtatious; one person who was at the table said it was completely appropriate.

After dinner, the group went to another bar. Katie, already three drinks in, decided to have a vodka tonic. She called her husband—communication between them was constant—and Jason would later say in testimony that she sounded “a little tipsy,” but “nothing more than if we had a few drinks on the weekend together.” (Katie’s drinking would later become a major topic at trial.)

At this point, the stories diverge. Katie claims that Hansen took an unfinished drink out of her hand, over her objections, and replaced it with a new one, pushing her hand up to encourage her to imbibe. After sipping it, Katie quickly started to feel nauseous and dizzy. Hansen claims that he never procured a drink for Katie, and that Katie seemed fine at the end of the night. Marcotte, who did describe Katie as visibly drunk, testified that she tested Katie’s drink and it was only Sprite.

The Aflac group took Ubers back to the hotel; there was a pickup truck set up in the parking lot with more drinks for an after-party. Katie couldn’t keep her head up. She needed two people to help her to her room. She called Jason, who could tell something was wrong. “She was repeating over and over again, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I’m so sick, I’m throwing up, I can’t walk,’” he told me. But she was in her room and presumably safe. Jason told her to sleep it off.

Sometime between 12:30 and 1:30 in the morning, there was a knock at Katie’s door. She hadn’t changed her clothes or taken her contacts out. She looked through the peephole and it was Hansen. “When I think back on all of this,” she recalled to me, “when I look and see a W-2 with Aflac, I did not think danger, I thought something must be wrong. I realize now I shouldn’t have opened the door.”

Hansen brushed past her and asked to use the bathroom. Katie went over to the bed to lie down. After urinating, Hansen went over to Katie and started rubbing her back and stomach. Katie claimed she asked him to leave. Both agree that there was sexual activity. Hansen said on the witness stand that it was consensual and brief and he ended it prematurely after thinking about his wife. To Katie, it was clearly rape. She testified that Hansen stuck his hand into her panties, and then ripped her pants off and started having sex with her. She remembers not being able to move her legs; she was crying and trying to push him away. (The Prospect interviewed four different former colleagues who confirmed that Katie told them she was assaulted shortly after the incident.)

Eventually, it ended. “He turned to me, and this I remember so clearly,” Katie said. “He said, ‘You know you can never tell anyone, right?’ And he walked out the door.” Hansen testified that he went back out to the parking lot, to the after-party.

For the next few hours, Katie slipped in and out of consciousness. She thought about her marriage, but also about her job, about everything she worked for, the plan she had mapped out for her life. “If I would have been assaulted in a back alley by a stranger, I would not have had these thoughts,” she said. “I knew because of who he was, my career would be over.”

EVERY DEVOTEE OF AMERICA’S SECULAR RELIGION, football, is familiar with Aflac, due to the nonstop commercials during every NCAA and NFL broadcast featuring the ubiquitous duck mascot, voiced by the late Gilbert Gottfried. Founded in 1955, American Family Life Assurance Company is best known for selling supplemental plans, mostly to small businesses, that cover gaps in traditional health insurance for accidents, cancer treatments, short-term disability, vision, or dental. Policyholders pay premiums through a payroll deduction, and Aflac prides itself on its “One Day Pay” option for claims.

Despite earning over $4.2 billion last year on $19.5 billion in revenue from millions of policyholders, Aflac has just 4,839 U.S. employees. (Its Japanese subsidiary, which is Japan’s leading provider of cancer insurance, has another 6,996 employees.) Nearly all Aflac revenue comes through its network of independent sales associates and brokers, who are paid entirely through commissions. The network consists of tens of thousands of sales agents, coordinators in training (CIT), district sales coordinators (DSC), and regional sales coordinators (RSC), none of whom are Aflac employees, even though many are managers with teams of people working under them, like Katie was.

I first wrote about Aflac five years ago, reporting on a series of lawsuits which alleged that, despite the company’s public commitment to integrity (Aflac routinely touts its inclusion on Ethisphere’s “World’s Most Ethical Companies” list for 17 years straight), it exploited workers, manipulated accounting in ways that deceived shareholders, and sold policies to customers without their consent. Aflac vigorously denied the claims and fought the lawsuits, one of which was dismissed in 2019; the other two were sent to arbitration.

Many claims in those lawsuits involved recruitment of new associates, who were lured in with promises of six-figure incomes. Sales agents must obtain their own insurance licenses in the states where they sell, as well as invest thousands of dollars into things like licensing classes, Aflac trainings, travel and transportation, desk space at offices, and even the stuffed animal ducks given to clients.

Once they get in, associates are told to hit up their friends and family for Aflac, or even buy their own policies. Another source of associate revenue is referral bonuses for new recruits, which are a desperately needed resource. The Aflac Participant Workbook, cited in one of the three lawsuits, devotes considerable space to counseling associates that “constant attention to recruiting must be part of your everyday activities,” and “recruiting is a full-time job.”

Without attractive leads to go on, many associates flame out. Aflac stated in its 2022 annual financial report that on average, 6,200 agents and brokers produce business on a weekly basis, even though there are as many as 75,000 agents in the field. When associates quit, the accounts they managed to sell are transferred to their superiors, who keep the old commissions while allowing other associates to mine them for new business. In other words, new associates bear many of the costs of writing new policies, while higher-ups primarily take the long-term benefits.

A lack of employee status can leave workers at Aflac at the mercy of their bosses.

The word “independent” obscures what it’s like to sell insurance for Aflac. “It was not a 1099 position by any means,” said Minardi. Several former agents and coordinators told the Prospect they were directed where to work and whom to work for, while being required (or at least highly recommended) to attend local and national meetings and phone calls, write business plans and reports, and donate a portion of commissions to an “incentive fund” controlled by the state office. RSCs like Katie must purchase enough office space and equipment for their teams; Katie told me that her market director accompanied her on real estate tours and pushed her to sign a long-term lease.

In an emailed response to the Prospect, Aflac chief communications officer Ines Rodriguez Gutzmer said that the sales force is “properly classified as independent contractors,” which gives them the opportunity “to own their own business, live where they want and work when they want.” She said that meetings are not required (though they help associates “obtain greater financial success”) and added that associates can contract with multiple insurance carriers, though multiple former 1099 workers told me that in practice, this was frowned upon by superiors.

In Katie’s trial, Hansen’s lawyer at one point referred to her not being an employee of the company. “She was a 1099 employee with all of the indicia of an employee applied to her,” the judge retorted. “She worked at the direction of Aflac, reported to people at Aflac.”

Using independent contractors rather than employees relieves companies from having to fund payroll or unemployment insurance taxes, or provide basic benefits like overtime pay or workers’ compensation. Independent contractors cannot collectively bargain, and lack certain labor protections. In June, the National Labor Relations Board modified the standard for distinguishing independent contractors from employees. While the new ruling makes it harder for companies to misclassify workers, the benefits make it quite lucrative.

A lack of employee status can also leave workers at the mercy of their bosses. I repeatedly heard stories about agents having accounts taken from them, associates or their superiors moved around the country to avoid disclosure of particular incidents, dissenters facing retaliation, and generally a “protect the brand” attitude. The structure of employment at Aflac, former workers said, facilitated this.

Under the Aflac Associate’s Agreement, signed by every independent contractor, Aflac can fire an employee immediately for cause, and even terminate “without cause or reason” with 30 days’ written notice. If there is any dispute between Aflac and a 1099 associate, the agreement contains a clause that waives the right to trial in favor of a secret arbitration process. Sales associates get fully vested for lifetime commissions on renewal policies after ten years, a perk that many view as a type of retirement security. But those renewal commissions can be forfeited if the agreement is breached, and former associates say Aflac uses those terms to their advantage.

Rodriguez Gutzmer disputed this, saying that Aflac has a “zero-retaliation policy,” with multiple ways for workers to report grievances and voice dissent without disciplinary action.

But the threat of losing renewal income makes many who worked with the company reluctant to speak out by name. “What I don’t stand for is a bully,” said one former Aflac agent who spent 16 years at the company, who requested anonymity due to not wanting to cause harm to his colleagues. “They hold this contract over people’s heads, they hold you hostage … I’ve seen this company ruin people.”

AT 6:30 IN THE MORNING AFTER THE ASSAULT, Katie called Jason five times. It was an hour earlier in Denver and he was still asleep. She sent several frantic texts that sounded mean (“Why are you ignoring me? I don’t get you at all”) and would later be used by Hansen’s defense at trial as evidence of their fraying relationship. Grasping at what to do, Katie then called a mentor of hers named Jim Garner, who advised her to talk to Aspen Madrid, one of her lunch companions, since she was a woman and at the conference.

Katie called Madrid and explained what happened. According to Katie’s testimony, Madrid, who is featured in a video on the Aflac website touting the company, told her: “You can either say something, or you don’t. If you say something, your career is over.” Katie responded, “How could I not say something?” and Madrid replied, “Everybody has dark secrets. How do you know it was even rape?” The conversation ended quickly. (In a deposition, Madrid said that Katie told her she had “cheated” on her husband, and never mentioned the rape until later.)

Katie also told her territory vice president Nate Harrison what happened, as well as her sister, before Jason called back. Neither of them knew what to do. “It was a barrage of emotions,” Jason told me later. The two finally realized that they had an insurance policy called LegalShield, which entitled them to free 24/7 legal advice. The LegalShield agent told Katie that the first thing she needed to do was take care of herself by going to the hospital. Any hospital informed of a rape, the agent explained, would be obligated to report it to the police.

At Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital in nearby Creve Coeur, Katie wasn’t prepared for what went into completing a rape kit—pulling out pubic hair, taking vaginal samples, the invasiveness of it all. She cried through nearly all of it. The forensic examination took six hours. Katie was treated for a sore pelvis and given anti-nausea medication and emergency contraception (for which she was charged $85; “it felt like I was being charged for being assaulted,” Katie would later say at trial). The hospital conducted a drug screen, as Katie believed Hansen had put something in her drink at the bar.

A Creve Coeur police officer questioned Katie at the hospital, and took her to the station for further interrogation. The police also administered the state highway patrol’s toxicology test. Both that and the hospital’s test came up negative for anything except trace amounts of marijuana edibles that Katie took to help her sleep, and the quinine from the vodka tonic. An expert toxicologist named Sarah Riley testified at trial that the hospital did not test for common “date rape” drugs like GHB, Rohypnol, and chloral hydrate. The highway patrol test screened for more drugs but had a high “cutoff” rate, which makes drugs harder to detect at lower concentrations, Dr. Riley said.

Katie’s attorneys couldn’t retest the samples because the vials of urine and blood were not preserved. The recording of Katie’s interview with police was also lost; only a written summary survives.

Justin Plaskov, Katie’s attorney, told me that police did not test key pieces of evidence, like Katie’s jeans or the bedding, for seminal fluid. They would have needed a subpoena to test Hansen’s DNA, so they didn’t. They never obtained Katie’s medical records from the hospital, even though Katie authorized their release. While doctors indicated in Katie’s records that there were no obvious signs of vaginal trauma, they didn’t take high-definition photos that could have showed micro-tears not discernible to the naked eye. “All of these things combined to have a lack of hard physical evidence that would have made the case easier,” Plaskov said.

The police questioned Katie, Madrid, and Marcotte, and one other person at the event, Katie’s market director Adam Wichmann. Though Jason had flown out to St. Louis to take Katie home, and was the last person to talk to her that night, the police didn’t talk to him. Nobody questioned Hansen in person, because he had left St. Louis that day for his home in Minnesota.

After Nate Harrison found out about the rape allegation, he stated in a deposition that he immediately called Aflac’s human resources department. Hansen was pulled out of morning meetings for a videoconference with Keyla Cabret-Lewis, who at the time was an Aflac senior HR manager. Cabret-Lewis told Hansen he was being put on indefinite leave but didn’t explain why, and had him turn in his work phone and computer. Since the work phone was the only point of contact for Hansen, that’s what the police kept calling, getting no response. It took a week for the police to figure this out and obtain Hansen’s personal contact from Aflac’s legal department.

Aflac spokesperson Rodriguez Gutzmer said that suspending Hansen and confiscating his phone was “consistent with company standard procedure.” She added that they “provided investigators with alternate numbers to contact him and offered our full cooperation.”

The police interview took place on September 6, by phone, with no face-to-face contact between the investigating officer, Kurt Schneider, and Hansen. According to Schneider, Hansen didn’t even know the purpose of the call; he thought it referred to a conversation at the Galaxy Group dinner about a pornographic film actress who used to work for Aflac. Hansen eventually admitted to sexual contact with Katie but said that it was consensual; Schneider said on the call that this was “probably” true. The conversation took about 15 to 20 minutes. Prosecutors were handed a he said/she said case of two out-of-towners with limited evidence and opted against pursuing criminal charges.

KATIE HAD TO CONTACT LUKE HANSEN, who was due to start on her team shortly, and tell him that it wasn’t going to work out. In a startlingly frank email to her staff, she wrote: “Something happened to me on Wednesday night that was devastating to me, and I am unsure of how I will adjust moving forward. I was sexually assaulted on Wednesday by a W-2 employee of Aflac … a highly esteemed individual put on a pedestal by many in the Aflac nation, including myself, prior to this.”

A couple of months later, Jason made enough sales to qualify for an Aflac trip, but they skipped it, given what happened on the last one. Katie described herself as “useless” at work. In January 2019, she asked for a demotion down to a district sales coordinator. Jason replaced her as regional sales coordinator, which seemed like trading one broken leader for another. But the couple had no other job prospects; they had to try to make it work. Katie would before long demote back to an associate, unable to deal with any management duties and reminders of that night in St. Louis. She essentially reversed everything she had worked for.

Katie said she gained over 60 pounds after the incident. Her young son Logan couldn’t understand why his mom would ball up on the couch, crying for no reason. Fitful sleep was punctuated by panic attacks. During one nightmare, she jerked forward so violently that she hit Jason and broke his nose. Another episode required an ambulance to come to the house. Eventually, she and Jason moved into separate rooms to sleep. To cope, Jason said he started drinking heavily.

“Life just completely flipped,” Katie told me.

Luke Hansen, incidentally, moved over to Aspen Madrid’s region. Madrid, who testified on Hansen’s behalf in a deposition, would within a few months get promoted to a market director position in Minnesota, Hansen’s home state. By April 2019, she’d hired Hansen’s wife Carol to work for her as an RSC. And a month later, Madrid and Hansen and their spouses all took an Aflac-sponsored trip to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, together; pictures were shown at the trial of the couples drinking on the beach and on a party boat.

Hansen was not an Aflac employee at the time. Two months after the incident, he testified in a deposition, his boss Nate Harrison told him that Aflac HR was likely to terminate him if he didn’t resign. Even having consensual sex with a 1099 contractor on a work trip would have violated the company misconduct code, as would the excessive drinking; Aflac had just instituted a two-drink maximum at work functions. “[Harrison] strongly suggested that I consider resigning and when everything kind of boils over, then I’ll have an opportunity to probably come back within a year,” Hansen said in testimony. So he stepped down. Rodriguez Gutzmer, of Aflac, confirmed that the company had decided to terminate Hansen before he resigned.

Hansen’s lawyers claimed he was a third-party beneficiary to the Andersons’ arbitration agreements with Aflac.

After learning of Hansen’s partying with Madrid at the Aflac event, Katie’s new lawyers (the LegalShield team was in way over their head) complained vociferously to Aflac about the pain that caused. Aflac sent Hansen a letter telling him he was not eligible for a rehire and forbidding him from setting foot on Aflac property again.

Katie’s lawyers sent a demand letter threatening litigation against Aflac, but the threat was empty, because of the arbitration clause in the Associate’s Agreement. Katie and Jason eventually submitted to a mediation process with Aflac, and the two sides worked out a settlement that neither the Andersons nor their lawyers are allowed to talk about. As part of the deal, in July 2019, Katie and Jason mutually agreed to separate from the company.

“The events that took place that evening are neither a reflection of our values nor what we stand for as a company,” Rodriguez Gutzmer said. “Our sympathies have been, and remain, with Ms. Anderson and her family.”

This led to other parts of the employment contract kicking in. The Associate’s Agreement has a non-solicitation clause. Katie and Jason were barred from making contact with any accounts from which they received commission for two years; a breach would cause a forfeit of any Aflac renewal payments. Many associates built their book of business through friends and family. Under non-solicitation, they had to be careful talking to important people in their lives. Moreover, insurance was Katie’s livelihood for nearly a decade; to continue, she’d have to start from scratch.

There was another matter: the office space Katie had to lease as an RSC, at the insistence of her market director. Despite being separated from Aflac, she was still on the hook for five years of payments on an empty office, with a lease that got progressively more expensive each year. When they were at Aflac, associates would pay the Andersons for their desk space. Now, the lease payments were entirely on them. As a final insult, the Associate’s Agreement stipulated that renewal payments fully vested after ten years. Katie had eight and a half years of service at Aflac before splitting.

But the settlement contained one significant loophole: It specifically excluded any legal claims against Hansen in his individual capacity. The Andersons could therefore speak publicly about the case in the context of litigation. That provided the opportunity for accountability.

THE CIVIL SUIT WAS FILED ON JULY 30, 2020, but letters were exchanged between the legal teams a year earlier. Hansen’s legal team, one of whom also represented Missouri governor Eric Greitens over blackmail allegations involving a mistress, sought a summary judgment (a verdict in their favor without a trial), and when that didn’t work, countersued on multiple counts: tortious interference to force him out at Aflac, defamation preventing him from maintaining a job in the insurance industry, conspiracy between Jason and Katie to lure him into a compromising situation and sue him for monetary damages, and abuse of the legal process itself. The abuse-of-process counterclaim was dismissed, and the conspiracy charge later dropped.

Hansen’s lawyers then argued that he couldn’t be sued at all. They claimed he was a third-party beneficiary to the Andersons’ arbitration agreements with Aflac. Federal district court judge John Ross denied the motion, ruling that the Andersons’ assault and battery claims, though they happened at a work event, were not related to Katie’s job. Hansen appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had never tested the proposition of whether sexual assault claims can arise from an employment contract.

Other appeals courts had, however, including the relatively famous case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the KBR/Halliburton employee who claimed she was drugged and gang-raped in Iraq in 2005, and imprisoned in a shipping container after she reported it. Jones ended up losing her case after key parts of her story were found to be embellished. But what was relevant for Hansen’s motion is that the Fifth Circuit ruled that Jones could not be barred from bringing a claim under KBR/Halliburton’s arbitration agreement, because the incident occurred after hours, outside of the workplace, following a social event. The Eighth Circuit applied the same logic to the Anderson case. The third-party arbitration claim was denied.

The Andersons’ primary lawyers, Justin Plaskov of Denver and Amy Gunn of St. Louis, had never tried a sexual assault case before. “This is a revictimization, when you are victimized to begin with and then have to go through the justice system,” said Gunn, who has over 25 years of trial experience. “[Katie] wanted that validation … the second larger issue is she wanted to be an example for other women who have also been through it and may not be strong enough to go through what she’s gone through.”

The revictimization peaked at the deposition, which Gunn described as “hours of abuse.” Beyond the eye of the jury, attorneys can ask about anything that might lead to relevant evidence, and do whatever they can to impeach the source—get them to say something inconsistent, or vague, or just wrong. Hansen’s attorney Douglas Dowd highlighted typos in Katie’s initial statement, discrepancies in how Katie listed her weight, whether she finished entire cocktails and glasses of wine, whether someone who is a friend at work should be labeled a friend, and other seemingly off-topic digressions.

Dowd got into excruciating detail about the rape: the position of Hansen’s hands, whether Katie was screaming, how her pants were removed. He focused on why it took her four and a half hours to report the rape. (Katie responded, “People take years to make decisions. That doesn’t mean they weren’t raped.”) Katie was moved to tears on multiple occasions, including when Dowd surprised her by showing her pictures of the hotel room.

“The point of that was to get her to drop the suit,” Gunn said. “She must have thought, ‘If I can live through that I can tell my story.’”

In a statement to the Prospect, Clayton Dowd, who worked with his father Douglas on the case, accused Plaskov of yelling loudly and slamming the table during the deposition. “This was clearly a contentious case where both sides vigorously disagreed with each other in almost every single instance,” Dowd said.

ON MAY 30, 2023, KATIE’S STORY WAS TOLD to a jury of three men and five women. Aflac attorneys were also in the gallery; “We naturally had attorneys present at the trial to monitor the case,” Rodriguez Gutzmer said. They tried to intervene in pretrial motions in order to protect their interests, but Judge Ross told them they would not be able to interrupt the proceedings.

Katie went through the entire story again, and her life before and after the incident, “all of these things that are messed up in me now that were never messed up in me before.” She described her significant efforts to get better, trying whatever she could: self-help books, medication, grounding techniques, and eventually antidepressants. Her life was still impacted, what she called a “process of mourning.” When asked why she filed suit, Katie answered: “Because I believe in accountability, and I believe that what he did was wrong, and I’m not going to let him just get away with it.”

A different attorney, James Bennett, cross-examined Katie at trial. He was considerably milder; when the jury is watching, it’s harder to be belligerent. He tried to claim that she wasn’t actually affected much by the assault because she started a consulting business, wrote a children’s poetry book, and started a podcast in the succeeding years. (None of these enterprises were particularly long-lasting or successful.) He even showed recent pictures where she was smiling. “We were merely seeking to show the jury the evidence that refuted her claim that emotional distress had ruined her career path,” Hansen attorney Clayton Dowd said. Later, the plaintiffs brought on an expert witness who evaluated Katie and agreed she had post-traumatic stress disorder; the defense expert who doubted Katie’s PTSD never personally examined her.

Hansen, who also took the stand, said Katie gave him her room number that night, and asked him to come and talk there before the next day’s meeting. When Hansen excused himself from the parking lot party to go to the bathroom, he decided to visit Katie’s room to have that conversation. Besides, the hotel bathroom was too far away, he said. “So just convenience? To use the restroom in … a married woman’s hotel room at 1 o’clock in the morning?” asked Katie’s lawyer. “I wasn’t looking at it that way,” he replied.

The passage of two laws could shift the landscape for workplace sexual misconduct.

Hansen denied putting anything in Katie’s drink, and the defense repeatedly noted that the toxicology reports showed no drugs in Katie’s system. The plaintiffs explained that the drug screening tests were deficient. But after a three-day trial, ultimately the jury agreed with the defense that evidence was lacking, and dismissed the claim about administering an intoxicating substance without consent.

But the jury found Hansen liable for battery based on nonconsensual sexual contact, and for damages to Jason Anderson sustained as a result of the injury to his wife. The jury awarded the Andersons $700,000. “Mr. Hansen maintains that Ms. Anderson asked him to engage in sexual activity multiple times on August 30, 2018,” Dowd told the Prospect over email.

Hansen’s lawyers then made a specific motion to amend the judgment, arguing that it should be subtracted from what Aflac gave the Andersons in the settlement. The judge denied that motion in September, but in so doing, revealed in a public document details of the confidential agreement, which were not disclosed at trial.

Aflac settled with the Andersons for $750,000—$300,000 of which was for attorney’s fees—and Judge Ross stated that it was not for the rape, but what happened afterward. “[Katie] testified at trial that after the sexual encounter, while she was still an independent contractor for Aflac, she continued to receive email chains that included Defendant’s name and email address,” Judge Ross wrote. “She testified just seeing his name in these email chains caused her emotional distress, bringing back unnecessary memories while she was trying to work.” In depositions, Katie also discussed a “lack of sensitivity in the workplace,” with agents and managers filling the halls with gossip about the incident.

The Aflac settlement damages, according to the judge’s order, were for negligent hiring, retention, and supervision of Hansen—including not being fired right away—and violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which covers employment discrimination on the basis of sex. The latter claim had to do with Katie allegedly missing out on promotions that she was qualified for, in her view because of the incident.

“Plaintiffs also claimed that Aflac was unsupportive after the sexual assault, including failing to support her efforts with the police,” Judge Ross added. It’s hard to say without seeing the settlement, but that could refer to Hansen being allowed to leave St. Louis and the confiscation of his work phone without informing police.

“Any suggestion that implies that Aflac did not make every effort to support [Katie] and/or cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities is inaccurate and misleading,” spokesperson Ines Rodriguez Gutzmer said.

THIS KIND OF INFORMATION ABOUT SETTLEMENTS is almost never revealed in sexual misconduct situations involving corporations. But last year, Congress set about to change this culture of secrecy.

The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, passed with a broad bipartisan vote in the House and Senate, does mostly what it says, giving victims a choice of using Article III courts instead of arbitration. The Speak Out Act, also passed overwhelmingly, invalidates nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreements in the context of a sexual misconduct dispute.

“The way I describe the difference,” said Julia Duncan, a senior director for government affairs at the American Association for Justice, “is that forced arbitration is applied at the front end, it cuts off your rights before you know what they are. NDAs cut off the rights at the back end; after something happens to you, you realize you can’t speak out about them.”

The passage of these two laws could shift the landscape for workplace sexual misconduct. They apply to employees, 1099 workers, migrant workers, consultants, and even consumers who are survivors of assault or harassment. But advocates are concerned that not enough workers are actually aware of these protections.

“Companies don’t have to tell employees about these laws,” explained Gretchen Carlson, who remains under a gag order in her sexual harassment settlement with the late Roger Ailes and Fox News. “They can still put arbitration and nondisclosure agreements into contracts, and it’s up to employees to say they don’t have to abide by them.” Carlson’s organization, Lift Our Voices, is preparing surveys for public companies in the Russell 3000 stock index, which will result in transparency on how corporations explain to workers their rights. Aflac, for their part, told the Prospect they are “fully aware and compliant” with the new laws.

The other problem is that the laws are forward-looking. If you have not filed a claim, even if the conduct predated the passage of the laws, you get their protections. But if, like the Andersons, your claim was filed earlier, you are stuck in the old system. The post-trial judgment in the Anderson case that revealed details of the Aflac settlement noted that the Andersons agreed to “not disparage Aflac” or “publicize or disclose” the terms. Judge Ross pointed out that this “agreed upon silence” was “likely for Aflac to ensure it won’t receive any negative publicity.”

Asked about the other employment contract provisions that kick in after sexual misconduct cases, like non-solicitation agreements, Carlson said, “If I could clone myself by 1,000 people, I would bring legislation to all these other clauses … When a person is telling the truth, that person should stay working and the bad person should leave.”

Hansen’s legal team did initially file an appeal in the case, but on October 24, a settlement was reached for $210,000 and the appeal dismissed. It was all over.

Katie and Jason and Logan moved just outside of San Antonio a year ago, in part to leave the emotional heaviness behind. Jason works with municipalities and schools on internet access; he said he and his wife are “trauma bonded,” and taking every day as it comes. Katie rebuilt her career and now works for a mutual insurer called Assurity. She’s a W-2; independent agents sell Assurity policies, but Katie says they are actually independent. “They don’t report to me,” Katie said. “We don’t tell them they have to have an office, go to meetings. There aren’t these massive parties, no fraternization between us and 1099s. It was unbelievably refreshing.”

Still, in our conversations, the pangs of regret for what might have been seeped in. Katie told me about how, up until the incident, she and Jason donated tens of thousands of dollars to Aflac’s children’s cancer campaign, and started a trend of others in Colorado donating as well. “I visited the cancer center,” she said. “I loved the company. I thought they cared about me.”

UPDATE: This article has been updated to reflect the cash amount of the final settlement in the case of Anderson v. Hansen.