New Delhi: Former MIT scientist David Sabatini, who lost his job following sexual misconduct allegations by colleague Kristin Knouse, has been awarded $6 million in a defamation lawsuit he filed against her.
The verdict was announced on October 16, after several years of legal proceedings. Sabatini sued Knouse over allegations she made in 2021, where she claimed that he had sexually groomed her while she was his graduate student at the Whitehead Institute, where Sabatini headed a laboratory for 24 years.
A jury of seven women and six men ordered Knouse, who had also filed a lawsuit against Sabatini, to pay him $6 million plus interest. The jury found that she had defamed him and harmed his ability to earn a living.
“It’s surreal,” Dr. Sabatini, 58, said after the verdict in a phone interview to The New York Times. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment for all this time, but often thinking I might not make it, financially, emotionally or physically.”
In 2021, Sabatini filed a defamation lawsuit against Knouse, the Whitehead Institute and its director, Ruth Lehmann. The claims against the institute were later dropped.
“We are so happy that we got David Sabatini’s good name back,” his lawyer, Lisa Arrowood, told The Boston Globe. “Now he can be regarded as the brilliant scientist he is.”
Allegation to award
A 2021 internal investigation found that David Sabatini had broken the Whitehead Institute’s rules by having a relationship with Kristin Knouse. At the time, Sabatini was a well-known biologist whose research on mTOR, a protein that controls cell growth, helped scientists better understand ageing and cancer.
However Sabatini said he and Knouse, who was then a fellow at the Whitehead Institute, began a consensual sexual relationship in 2018. According to him, the relationship ended when he started pursuing another woman.
Knouse, however, told investigators that the relationship was coercive. She also alleged that Sabatini had used his position of power and created a toxic, sexually charged environment in his laboratory.
The allegations had a major impact on Sabatini’s career. MIT placed him on indefinite leave, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute dismissed him for violating its sexual harassment and workplace conduct policies.
He also resigned from the Whitehead Institute after an investigation into his behaviour.
The dispute later went to court. A jury at Massachusetts’ Suffolk County Superior Court found that Knouse had defamed Sabatini and interfered with his ability to earn a living. The jury awarded him $6 million in damages.
However, Knouse’s lawyer, Ellen Zucker, said she would appeal the verdict. She defended her client’s account and argued that women often face difficulties when making allegations against men who hold positions of power.
“She was not the only one who came to court to speak about what they had observed and encountered with Dr. Sabatini. There were multiple women who took the stand and talked about very concerning experiences they had in the course of their training in the Sabatini lab,” Zucker told People.
“It is disappointing that the jury’s verdict reflects none of this. It is sadly a marker of our times where it is still hard for women to be believed, and still hard to call powerful men to account,” she added.
(Edited by Aakriti Handa)