Top LVMH exec lives in fear

THE top lawyer accusing luxury-goods giant LVMH of ignoring her sexual-harassment claims has told Page Six of the pain and fear she’s suffering while she’s forced to work with her alleged harasser every day. And she says the company tried to make her apologize to the man she claims tormented her for years.

Andowah Newton, the conglomerate’s VP of legal affairs and litigation counsel, alleges that she was subjected to years of harassment from a senior staffer, who she claims engaged in a campaign against her involving everything from making lewd comments to pinning her against her desk chair and “thrusting his . . . genitals into her face.” She still works at LVMH and tells us she fears for her safety because she sees her alleged harasser every day.

Newton, who claimed that her colleague harassed her between 2015 and 2018, told us that LVMH — which owns Louis Vuitton, Dior and Marc Jacobs, among many others — has “suggested that I apologize to the man who harassed and assaulted me,” and that company brass “insinuated that . . . I should have thought about how he would feel about being reported. They told me that he was distraught, unable to sleep or eat and concerned for his position because of my report.” Meanwhile, “they have not expressed any such concern for my well-being.”

In the court papers, Newton alleged that while she also can’t sleep or eat, her colleague has since been promoted to a very senior level.

She also says in her suit that, stunningly, bosses attempted to “convince Ms. Newton that the harassment was just a byproduct of being an attractive woman who works at a company with a French culture, and thus, should simply be tolerated.” She told us the claim is “insulting to French people everywhere.”

On Aug. 8, a New York judge will decide whether Newton can have her day in court or will have to go into forced arbitration. An LVMH rep said: “There is no merit whatsoever to the inaccurate and misleading allegations in Ms. Newton’s suit.”