Miss America Organization suspends CEO amid email scandal
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. >> The Miss America Organization suspended its CEO on Friday, less than 24 hours after leaked emails surfaced showing him and others disparaging the appearance, intellect and sex lives of former Miss Americas.
Sam Haskell will remain suspended for an indefinite period while the organization investigates the content of the emails, their distribution within the organization, and how they came to wind up in the possession of the Huffington Post, which published them on Thursday.
“The board will be conducting an in-depth investigation into alleged inappropriate communications and the nature in which they were obtained,” the group said in a statement issued Friday evening, hours after 49 former Miss Americas signed a petition demanding the resignation of Haskell and other pageant officials.
Haskell said the story was “unkind and untrue,” but did not specify what he claims was untruthful in the story.
The Huffington Post reported on the emails, including one that used a vulgar term for female genitalia to refer to past Miss America winners, one that wished that a particular former Miss America had died, and others that speculated about how many sex partners another former Miss America has had.
A petition organized by former Miss North Carolina Jennifer Vaden Barth garnered the signatures of the former Miss Americas. It called the emails by Haskell and others “despicable” and faulted officials who “sat by without objection while such derisive comments were passed around.”
Several of the emails targeted Mallory Hagan, who won the 2013 pageant, claiming she had gained weight after winning and speculating about how many men she had sex with. In other emails, a former writer for the pageant notes the death of one former Miss America and muses that he wished 1998 Miss America Kate Shindle, who wrote a book critical of the Miss America Organization, had died instead. Haskell responded to the email, indicating it made him laugh.
The emails already cost the pageant its television production partner and raised questions about the future of the nationally televised broadcast from Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall the week after Labor Day each year. Dick Clark Productions told the AP on Thursday night that it cut ties with the Miss America Organization over the emails, calling them “appalling.”