The counterclaim by an alleged victim of MIT professor David Sabatini said she was coerced into sex and that Sabatini’s laboratory had a “toxic and sexually charged” environment.
David Sabatini pictured above. (Whitehead Institute)
In August 2021, David Sabatini, M.D., Ph.D., a cell biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, part of the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology (MIT), was fired for sexual harassment of at least two women. Per an email posted on Twitter that was purported to be sent to Whitehead staff from the institute’s director Ruth Lehmann, a legal investigation “found that Dr. Sabatini violated the Institute’s policies on sexual harassment among other policies unrelated to research misconduct.”
Sabatini sued, claiming he was the victim of false claims made to “exact revenge against a former lover.”
One of the women, who has not been identified, filed a counterclaim yesterday in Middlesex Superior Court against Sabatini. The counterclaim alleged Sabatini coerced the woman into sex and that his laboratory had a “toxic and sexually charged” environment.
Sabatini is best known for discovering mTOR kinase, a master regulator of protein translation, cell growth, and proliferation, and associated signaling pathway. He discovered it as a graduate student in the 1990s.
Sabatini’s attorneys stated, “David Sabatini, the actual scientist, colleague, manager and mentor, bears no resemblance to the person described in the recently filed counterclaim, and that will become clear as this case progresses.”
In Sabatini’s lawsuit filed in October, he claimed the sexual relationship was consensual but ended in 2019. He had told her “on multiple occasions that he did not want a long-term relationship.” According to the suit, the woman continued to pursue him and “fabricated claims that Dr. Sabatini had sexually harassed her (when in fact the exact opposite was the case).”
Court documents filed by Sabatini’s attorneys alleged the Whitehead Institute conducted a “sham” investigation where the investigators “spent literally hours attempting to elicit unflattering information about Dr. Sabatini while their descriptions of what lab culture was really like were ignored.”
In the most recent counterclaim, the woman alleges that Sabatini “groomed” her “while she was a graduate student under his mentorship, inviting her to social events at his lab where alcohol flowed freely” and where the talk was “85% sexual [and] 15% science.” According to her claims, Sabatini asked her earlier whether she was “fun” and sexually available.
In at least one part of the lawsuit, Sabatini allegedly pursued an ungraduated who worked in his laboratory, suggesting he pay for airfare and a hotel so she could spend time with him while he traveled overseas. In a meeting with yet another young woman, the suit alleges Sabatini told her he wanted to work on “a project trying to figure out why pubic hair is the length that it is.”
The woman’s lawsuit claims that, in 2018, after he invited her to Washington, DC, to meet colleagues, he coerced her into sex, proposing casual sex and attempting to dismiss her concerns about his control over her career. “In the end,” the lawsuit states, “although she never consented, he had his way.”
The lawsuit alleges Sabatini demanded sex more than 10 times in 2018 and 2019, often via obscene text messages. She eventually left the Whitehead Fellow Program two years early to get away from him.
An investigation into sexual harassment conducted by the new director of the Whitehead Institute in 2020 led to Sabatini’s laboratory. Sabatini allegedly questioned his employees and fellows on their survey results and threatened not to raise the issue. In April 2020, the woman who has filed the countersuit told the Whitehead investigators about Sabatini and he retaliated, claiming she pursued him sexually. When he rejected her, she began a vendetta against him. The lawsuit includes allegations against Sabatini of sexual harassment, retaliation, a hostile work environment, assault and battery, interference with her career, and intentionally inflicting emotional distress.
The lawsuit seeks a range of compensation, including punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, compensatory damages for damage to her reputation, emotional distress and suffering, and payment of her medical bills.
