Groped, harassed, propositioned: how female reporter went undercover to bring down posh men-only London charity

Wanted: attractive young women wearing sexy underpants to serve as hostesses for British business bigwigs at drunken old-boys-only charity affair.

In 2018.

When tabloid-style news of this event broke in the usually decorous Financial Times on Wednesday, the recoil was immediate.

The story of well-heeled men acting badly was not exactly Britain’s #MeToo moment. London has been the scene of alleged acts of sexual harassment by both Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, while the government has been roiled by its own “sex pest” scandals, including the resignation late last year of defence secretary Michael Fallon, accused of repeatedly putting his hand on a well-known radio journalist’s knee at a dinner in 2002.

But the newspaper investigation into the harassment doled out at a London charity event last Thursday has delivered a fresh jolt. The report alleged that women who served as hostesses, some of them college students, were groped, harassed and propositioned. One elderly attendee asked one of the hostesses if she were a prostitute.

The undercover reporter who wrote the piece later said she, too, was pawed and subjected to lewd comments.