The Washington Football Team is getting hammered with a staggering, and record-setting, $10 MILLION fine after the NFL wrapped up its sexual misconduct investigation of the organization … TMZ Sports has learned.
The punishment was determined and handed down Thursday after the league investigated claims that high-ranking figures within the team sexually harassed and verbally abused female employees repeatedly and rampantly over the last decade.
At least 15 women came forward with the allegations last year … saying the NFL’s team workplace was toxic and demeaning toward females.
In a bombshell 2020 Washington Post report, one of the women — former marketing coordinator Emily Applegate — said she was told to wear revealing clothes “so the men in the room have something to look at.”
Another woman — who wished to remain anonymous, according to the report — alleged men in the team’s football facility would stand at the base of a staircase near the entrance in order to stare up women’s skirts.
The league’s fine of the team is historic — it’s the largest The Shield has EVER slapped on a team or individual.
Worth noting, the WFT and its owner, Dan Snyder, just announced sweeping and progressive changes to the organization … including naming Snyder’s wife, Tanya, the new co-CEO. Other changes, some put in motion 18 months ago, include changing the cheerleading squad to a co-ed dance team and installing a more racially diverse front office.
Snyder, who was not personally fined by the league, says … “I feel great remorse for the people who had difficult, even traumatic experiences while working here. I’m truly sorry for that.”
“I can’t turn back the clock, but I promise that nobody who works here will ever have that kind of experience again, at least not as long as Tanya and I are owners of this team.”
Commissioner Roger Goodell added, in a league statement Thursday, “Over the past 18 months, Dan and Tanya have recognized the need for change and have undertaken important steps to make the workplace comfortable and dignified for all employees, and those changes, if sustained and built upon, should allow the club to achieve its goal of having a truly first-tier workplace.”