Which OT'er is this? #metoo! Executive spanks female employees

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An Alabama newspaper executive recently admitted he spanked at least one of his female employees with a metal ruler during the 1970s -- but he said he was only following a doctor's orders.

In reports published in Alabama news outlets, at least three women said H. Brandt Ayers, who became a nationally known voice of Southern liberalism during his tenure as editor and publisher at The Anniston Star, assaulted them in the mid-1970s, once using a metal ruler. The women and other former newsroom employees said Ayers had a reputation for spanking other women.

Ayers, 82, issued a statement stating he “did some things I regret” when he was “a very young man with more authority than judgment.”

He also admitted he spanked “at least one female reporter decades ago,” but claimed it was per doctor’s orders, the Anniston Star reported.

Ayers told the publication he spanked a woman and claimed the woman was psychologically ill and a doctor recommended he spank the woman to “calm her down.”

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An online publication, Alabama Political Reporter, first reported the allegations of former Star employee Veronica Pike Kennedy.

Kennedy told the Advertiser she was working as a part-time clerk in the nearly deserted newsroom on a Saturday morning in 1975 when Ayers asked her to read one of his columns and she jokingly asked who had written it.

"And he said, 'Oh, you are being a bad girl,'" Kennedy said. "'You know what I do to bad girls? I spank them."

Ayers forcibly pulled her out of a chair and whipped her with a metal ruler, Kennedy said. She said she was hit 18 times by the ruler.

“I was fighting him the whole time. Trying to kick him. Bite him. Scratch him. Whatever I could do,” Kennedy said.

She said Ayers told her, “Well, that ought to teach you to not be a bad girl.”

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