Women’s March Co-Founder Linda Sarsour Accused of Enabling Sexual Assault, Threatening Victim

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Linda Sarsour, the Brooklyn-born Muslim activist who co-founded the Women’s March and often advocates on behalf of Palestinians, may have just been outed as an enabler of sexual assault after one of her previous employees shared her story of working for her at the Arab American Association in 2009.

Asmi Fathelbab, the alleged victim, is Muslim and now 37 years old. She told the Daily Caller that after complaining to Sarsour about a man in her office building groping and sexually harassing her, she was immediately dismissed and even fat-shamed.

“She called me a liar because ‘Something like this didn’t happen to women who looked like me,’” Fathelbab recalled. “How dare I interrupt her TV news interview in the other room with my ‘lies.’”

The alleged assaulter, Majed Seif, lived in the same building as the Arab American Association {snip} .

“He would sneak up on me during times when no one was around, he would touch me, you could hear me scream at the top of my lungs,” Fathelbab said, remembering that one of Seif’s favorite things to do was sneak up on her with a full erection. “He would pin me against the wall and rub his crotch on me.”

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“It was disgusting,” Fathelbab said. “I ran the youth program in the building and with that comes bending down and talking to small children. You have no idea what it was like to stand up and feel that behind you. I couldn’t scream because I didn’t want to scare the child in front of me. It left me shaking.”

After she was dismissed by Sarsour, Fathelbab attempted to report it to the board of directors or even go public, but Sarsour threatened her with legal action for bringing up false claims. Fathelbab went to the president of the board of directors, Ahmed Jaber, but her story was dismissed by him, too.

“Jaber told me my stalker was a ‘God-fearing man’ who was ‘always at the mosque,’ so he wouldn’t do something like that,” Fathelbab said. “He wanted to make it loud and clear this guy was a good Muslim and I was a bad Muslim for complaining.”

Fathelbab continued to report her sexual assault to others in the building and even to AmeriCorps. It only made matters worse as she was reprimanded by them and a community liaison from the New York Police Department threatened to arrest Fathelbab for making “false claims.”

Sarsour even threatened Fathelbab’s professional life after her time at the Arab American Association, promising she’d never work in New York City again. “She told me I’d never work in NYC ever again for as long as she lived. She’s kept her word. She had me fired from other jobs when she found out where I worked. She has kept me from obtaining any sort of steady employment for almost a decade.”

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Linda Sarsour