'I was absolutely humiliated': Alabama reporter who was spanked by boss tells her story | CBC Radio (2024)

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· Posted: Jan 04, 2018 3:46 PM EST | Last Updated: January 5, 2018

In 1975, Veronica Pike Kennedy was a young reporter atthe Anniston Starnewsaper in Alabama when her then-publisher publicly spanked her in the newsroom.

The allegations, along with those of another reporter, were published Tuesday in The Anniston Star. It's alleged that Ayers — known informally as "Brandy' — assaulted multiple women by spanking them during his time as publisher of the paper.

Ayers, now 82, waschairman of Consolidated Publishing whichowns the Anniston Star. On Thursday he resigned.In an earlierstatement to the paper he admitted to the spankings, andblamed the assaults on youthful mistakes. Ayers would have been around 40 years old at the time.

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Kennedy says she came forward about the assault after multiple reports of sexual misconduct in the entertainment and media industries spurred by the #MeToo movement.

She described what happened to As It Happens host Carol Off.

Who is this man, Brandt Ayers?

Brandy became publisher, I believe, in the sixties. A very powerful man. In many ways, a big fish in a small pond. The Anniston Star was considered one of those papers where young people wanted to work.

Brandy had come in that morning on the Saturday. I was still in college, I just happened to be there in the morning and quite frankly I think he was waiting for his chance.

He came into the newsroom and brought his editorial for Sunday and he said, "I'll come back and you can tell me how good this is." He did come back and he said, "what do you think?" I said, "this is really, very good, you're right! Who wrote it?" You know, just joking.

Then he said, "oh, you've been a bad girl, I'm going to have to spank you."

He said that? He said those words?

Oh yes. You knew that you were going to get assaulted if he said those words — "Oh, you've been a bad girl." I honestly thought he was joking until he started coming around my desk.

I literally held on as tight as I could to the seat of my desk chair. And he was three times my size. He literally picked me and the chair up, turned me over the desk behind him and we had these things at the time called pica poles. They were a metal ruler, basically, that newspaper layout folks used to measure copy.

He started hitting me with that. I think it was the first thing he found. He said, "How old are you? I'm going to give you as many licks as you are old." And I had been counting because I was a reporter — I wanted to know exactly what was going on. I think he was at 15 or 16 and I just blurted out, "I'm 18!" even though I was a little older than that. I just wanted him to stop hitting me.

So, he did and he said, "I hope this teaches you to not be a bad girl anymore." Then he turned around and walked out.

But there are other people in the room, there are other reporters. What did they do?

There was one other reporter in there and this young man who was basically my age. This was one of his first journalism jobs and he just couldn't believe what he was seeing.

I was absolutely humiliated. I was angry. When you're in a situation like that and you're young and this was the 1970s — a lot of people don't want to say things were different then, but the truth is that things were different then.

What would your parents have done?

My daddy was a really good man, but he was a blue-collar worker and absolutely a World War II hero. There is no doubt in my mind that he would have taken his .38 pistol and walked down to The Anniston Star and killed Brandy.

So, I couldn't tell him.

You're not the only woman he did this to. In fact, one he apparently claimed that he consulted a doctor who told him to spank a female reporter because she was psychologically ill and that would cure her, he claims.

Do you know any doctor alive that would give that kind of advice? Especially to a woman that was having some psychological problems. Of course Brandy said he couldn't remember the name of the doctor.

The astonishing thing is that the reporter who put this story out got a question to Mr. Ayers asking him about these spankings to which he said: "As a young man, with more authority than judgement, I did some things I regret."

So he doesn't deny that he did this to any of you.

But when he was a very young man, he was 40 years old. That's not a very young man, especially in the seventies. When my daddy was 40 years old, he was getting grey hair.

So, he can say youthful indiscretions all he wants, but that's not what it is.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear the full interview with Veronica Pike Kennedy, listen in the player above.