The top editor for the National Enquirer, Us Weekly and other major gossip publications openly described his sexual partners in the newsroom, discussed female employees’ sex lives and made women in the office watch or listen to pornographic material, former employees told the Associated Press. 

The behavior by Dylan Howard, currently the chief content officer of American Media Inc, occurred while he was running the company’s Los Angeles office, according to men and women who worked there. Howard’s self-proclaimed nickname was Dildo, the former employees said. His conduct led to an internal inquiry in 2012 by an outside consultant, and former employees said he stopped working out of the LA office after the inquiry.

Howard quit soon after the report was completed, but the company rehired him one year later with a promotion that landed him in the company’s main office in New York. It was not clear whether Howard faced any discipline over the accusations. The AP is not aware of any sexual harassment allegations involving Howard since he was rehired.

The AP spoke with 12 former employees who knew about the investigation into Howard’s behavior, though not all were aware of every detail. Philip Deming, the outside investigator hired to examine complaints about Howard’s behavior, also confirmed to the AP that he completed a report.

Many of the former employees who described Howard’s behavior said they had decided to do so after the New Yorker and other news organizations published emails in recent weeks showing that Howard had worked with Harvey Weinstein to undermine allegations of sexual assault and harassment against the movie producer.

The emails showed that Howard had dispatched a reporter to uncover derogatory information about an actor who had accused Weinstein of rape, and then shared that information with Weinstein. Howard has said he pursued the information as part of due diligence before entering into a business relationship with Weinstein. Weinstein, who has denied allegations of non-consensual sex, has maintained he was passing along a news tip to Howard that was never published.

In a brief phone interview, Howard characterized the ex-employees’ claims about his behavior as “baseless”.

A lawyer for American Media confirmed Tuesday that an outside investigator was hired to look into two employees’ claims.

The lawyer, Cam Stracher, said the investigation did not show serious wrongdoing. Stracher confirmed that one employee had complained that Howard said he wanted to create a Facebook account for her vagina, but Stracher said Howard said that had never happened.

“It was determined that there was some what you would call as horsing around outside the office, going to bars and things that are not uncommon in the media business,” Stracher said, “but none of it rose to the level of harassment that would require termination.”

American Media publishes the National Enquirer, RadarOnline, Star and other gossip publications and websites. In March, the company purchased the glossy Us Weekly magazine for a reported $100m, significantly boosting its readership among women.

In his job, Howard oversees those newsrooms.

A company spokesman, Jon Hammond, described the two employees who had formally complained about Howard’s alleged behavior as “disgruntled”.

“The investigation described an environment where employees mixed socially outside the office – sometimes at bars – but found no direct support for the allegations of harassment made by the two complainants,” Hammond said in an email.

Most of the former employees spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements, sometimes as part of severance packages.

Two former employees, one a senior manager and another a reporter in the LA office, agreed to be publicly identified to discuss Howard’s behavior.

“The behavior that Dylan displayed and the way he was and the way the company dealt with it – I just think that it has to be made public because it’s completely unacceptable,” said Maxine Page, a former senior editor at RadarOnline. She complained to the human resources department about Howard’s behavior on behalf of two female reporters.

Howard made inappropriate comments to and about one of those women, Page and six other ex-employees said. Howard told employees in the newsroom he wanted to create a Facebook account on behalf of the woman’s vagina, commented on her sex life and made her and other female employees either watch or listen to graphic recordings of sex involving celebrities despite there being no professional rationale for doing so, they said.

A former senior editor recalled that Howard had wrongly claimed during a newsroom meeting that the woman had had sex with a journalism source and praised her for it, saying she needed to “do what you need” to get a story.

The editor said: “He encouraged her to have sex with people for information.”

The woman Howard was discussing confirmed these and other incidents to the AP but declined to be identified.

Stracher, the company lawyer, said no one interviewed by the outside investigator complained about Howard’s handling of pornographic material. Stracher said there was nothing inherently inappropriate about that in the celebrity news business. Stracher also said no one complained to the investigator about Howard’s alleged encouragement of a reporter to sleep with news sources.

Another former reporter, Liz Crokin, said she was also harassed by Howard, including once when he asked whether she was “going to be walking the streets tonight” on a day she wore heels to work.

Crokin said she believed Howard retaliated against her after Deming interviewed her, taking away serious work and assigning her menial tasks.

Page and Crokin, like many of the other former employees who spoke to AP, were laid off by the company during waves of downsizing at AMI. The others who left the company said they did so by choice.

American Media regularly asked exiting employees to sign nondisclosure agreements that prohibited them from disclosing confidential information or disparaging company executives.

Shortly after the report on Howard’s conduct was issued, Howard took a new job with another company.

It’s unclear what the report concluded or whether Howard faced any disciplinary action.

The AP was unable to obtain a copy of the report. Its author, Philip Deming, confirmed he wrote a report but said he could not talk about what he found or the recommendations he made.

Howard openly discussed the investigation with some reporters and editors, one former employee said. A January 2012 email provided to the AP by another former employee said: “There is an investigation going on of my boss right now and it’s made everyone awkward and uncomfortable. You could cut the tension with a knife.”

The company lawyer, Stracher, said any employees who witnessed or had concerns about Howard’s behavior should have raised them at that time.

Another ex-employee who was interviewed by Deming recalled being anxious about speaking with the HR consultant.

“I told the investigator I didn’t know anything,” said the former employee, acknowledging that answer was not true. “It’s almost like I had Stockholm syndrome.”

During his time at American Media in Los Angeles, six former employees said, Howard blurred the lines between his role as a manager and his personal life, throwing parties in Las Vegas and in Malibu and inviting female reporters to accompany him in the evenings.

For his 30th birthday party, Howard invited a dozen employees to Las Vegas in January 2012 for an all-expenses-paid, three-day party he dubbed ‘Dildo’s Dirty 30’, according to a copy of the professionally designed invitation obtained by the AP.

A week later, ex-employees said, Deming, the HR consultant, began conducting interviews.