By Rosner
A one-time senior executive at Tinder who publicly accused the dating app’s former CEO of sexually assaulting her has filed a new lawsuit against him and her former parent companies, alleging she was canned for speaking out.
The accusations from Rosette Pambakian, former VP of Marketing, were first revealed in a separate $2 billion lawsuit filed against the company in Aug. 2018, alleging the IAC Group — Tinder’s parent company — lowballed Tinder’s valuation to cut its founding members, including Pambakian, out of stock options.
Included in the suit were bombshell allegations that former Tinder CEO and IAC Chairman Greg Blatt groped and sexually harassed Pambakian at the 2016 company holiday party in Los Angeles.
Pambakian was placed on administrative leave and then fired on August 15, 2018 — just a day after the first lawsuit was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
In her new suit filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the ex-executive claims she was wrongfully axed after parent companies IAC and Match Group failed to adequately investigate her claims.
Pambakian alleges in the suit, she was “subject to additional harassing, offensive, and insulting behavior, put on administrative leave, publicly accused of consenting to her attacker’s advances, and finally, wrongfully terminated.”
She is seeking unspecified monetary damages for negligence, wrongful termination, sexual battery, gender violence and retaliation.
Pambakian “had hoped that speaking out about the assault and its blowback would lead to positive change within the company and its leadership,” Elizabeth Graham, a lawyer representing Pambakian.
“Instead, Match and IAC launched a scorched-earth campaign against her. She has had time to reflect and to consider the impact these events have had on her — and her career — and realized that asserting her rights in court is the only way she will get justice.”
Tinder didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
