‘Groomer-ish’: Former Employees Describe Steven Crowder’s Sexual Harassment

Far-right media personality Steven Crowder, who has falsely accused teachers of “grooming” children, has been accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace, and some of his employees say he is an actual “groomer.”

Speaking under anonymity due to fear of retaliation, five former staff members on Steven Crowder’s show Louder with Crowder accused the host of creating a hostile work environment that included bullying, erratic behavior including rampant drug use, and, most alarmingly, according to multiple people, sexual harassment, Mediaite reports.

According to text messages reviewed by the outlet, Crowder sent photos of his genitals to co-workers. He would also allegedly expose his genitals to employees in person so frequently that most of them either laughed uncomfortably or showed outright disgust as a way to give him the attention he sought to as a way to get him to stop.

“The more disgusted everyone seemed, the more pleasure he seemed to get from it. It’s like he couldn’t understand that we weren’t in on his ‘joke,’” one person told Mediaite.

Another person who said they received unsolicited and unwanted images of Crowder’s genitals from the host warned that looking back at the behavior, they believe he was acting in a way he had accused others of.

“In the moment, we dismissed it as sort of frat boy humor. In hindsight, it’s super creepy and felt groomer-ish,” the former employee explained.

It wasn’t the first time Crowder was accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace.

In May, after home surveillance video of Crowder berating his wife abusively in 2021 surfaced, staffers told the New York Post that he would expose himself in the workplace.

Some LGBTQ+ supporters say those who make the wildest accusations and raise their voices the loudest tend to be projecting. In psychology, the term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection, in which a person assigns unacceptable urges to another person, animal, or object.

Last year, during Teacher Appreciation Week, on Twitter, Crowder called for punishing certain teachers.

“The best way to appreciate the good teachers out there is to point out and punish the others who are out trying to corrupt and groom our children. #TeacherAppreciationWeek not Groomer Appreciation Week,” he wrote.

Right-wing extremists and mainstream Republicans have falsely used the “groomer” smear to describe members of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly drag queens, teachers, and transgender individuals. They claim that community members are “grooming” kids for exploitation. Some subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the government, mainly liberals, is trying to make children gay and transgender.

The right-wing extremist group, Moms for Liberty, promotes this false conspiracy theory.

Crowder, a former staffer said, only exposed himself to other men.

“In regards to exposing himself in general, to my knowledge, he only exposed himself to male staffers,” the person said. “It happened all the time. It was a regular occurrence. It usually happened when he was in a really good, sort of manic mood. So while we all were disgusted by it, and it was never welcomed, it was preferable to him being in a bad mood and how he treated people in that state.”