Bay Area CEO accused in lawsuit of enslaving assistant, taking her into ‘dark abyss of sexual horror’

Lawsuit includes alleged nine-page "slave contract."

A CEO fired this fall from a major Bay Area technology company is accused in a new lawsuit of enslaving his assistant and sending her into “a dark abyss of unwanted sexual horror.”

In October, San Francisco-headquartered business-software firm Tradeshift — which attained “unicorn” status in 2018 with a $1.1 billion valuation — announced that it had terminated former CEO Christian Lanng five weeks earlier for “gross misconduct on multiple grounds” after management learned about “serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment” against him.

On Thursday, a woman identified as Jane Doe sued Tradeshift and Lanng, claiming Lanng, within months of her hiring as his executive assistant, coerced her into signing a “slave contract.” Years of rape, sexual abuse, torture and assault followed, the lawsuit alleged.

Doe claimed Lanng’s sadomasochistic bondage involved “inflicting physical pain on her by various means, urinating on her and routinely penetrating her person with foreign objects.”

Lanng could not be reached for comment. In a statement to website TechCrunch in October about his firing, Lanng denied the company’s sexual-misconduct allegations against him, saying, “There has never been an HR case, complaint or formal allegation filed against me at Tradeshift.”

Doe claims she told Tradeshift’s human-resources department and company officials about her “suffering at the hands of the CEO under the slave contract,” but instead of protecting her, Tradeshift, which has offices in London, Tokyo, Paris and seven other international locations, fired her in 2020. Tradeshift did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit, filed Thursday in San Francisco County Superior Court. The lawsuit does not make clear how long Doe worked at Tradeshift.

A purported copy of the slave contract, running to nine pages and bearing a signature alleged to be Lanng’s, is filed as Exhibit A with the lawsuit.

Among the many purported provisions of the contract are that Doe, “Always be sexually available for her master when he needs sex and to never refuse him sex even when not wearing the collar,” and, “Whenever she sees her master in private for the first time, she is to kneel and ask if there is anything she can do for him.”

Under the purported “at work” section of the alleged contract, Doe was free to “act independently as long as she remembers she is her master’s property and she is there to please him and for no other reason.”

Other alleged provisions detail mandatory sex acts. The purported document also allegedly required Doe to dress in “a proper, feminine way, preferably skirts, dresses and stockings,” to keep her weight between 130 and 155 pounds, and noting her weight weekly in a spreadsheet shared with Lanng. Doe was allegedly required to wear her “day collar” when out with Lanng.

“The Master will work to shape the slave towards his goal of the perfect woman,” the purported contract said.

Allowed under the alleged contract is “any punishment the master decides to inflict, whether earned or not,” including spanking, caning, slapping, humiliation and electric shock, although the purported document noted the “master’s responsibility” to avoid killing Doe or committing permanent bodily harm.

“The slave agrees to always taking her punishments without being angry, sullen or frustrated with her master and thank him after,” the contract allegedly said.

Doe claimed in the lawsuit that Lanng “beat her to the point of bleeding” and sexually abused her with “inanimate objects.”

Lanng forced Doe to keep a “diary” tracking “his subjugation and enslavement of her,” and would “beat Jane Doe with a cane if she did not write submissive entries in the ‘diary,'” the lawsuit alleged.

Doe claimed in the lawsuit that she signed the slave contract because she “loved her job, was accomplishing important work in her new role and did not want to lose the opportunity to work a Tradeshift.”

The lawsuit includes a purported termination letter from Tradeshift to Lanng, referring to “a pattern” of serious sexual misconduct complaints against him. The purported letter said the company had received “detailed evidence” related to a different woman and said Lanng had entered into a settlement agreement with Doe in May 2022 but failed to adhere to its payment provisions.

Doe claimed in the lawsuit that she has been in touch with “other victims” of sexual abuse, torture and assault “in connection with Lanng, under the aegis of Tradeshift.”

“At certain points during Lanng’s years-long sexual abuse, torture and assault of Jane Doe, she … tried to disengage from the ‘master-slave’ arrangement outlined in the slave contract, but when she did, Lanng would become enraged, even violent,” the lawsuit claimed, adding that in one such alleged incident, Langg assaulted her in public in Davos, Switzerland.

The alleged abuses left Doe “bedridden and in a precarious psychological state for almost two years,” the lawsuit claimed. She continues to experience pain and post-traumatic stress disorder, and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical, therapeutic and psychiatric care, the lawsuit alleged. She “bears numerous scars and bodily damage, remnants from the actual, physical sexual torture she endured at Lanng’s hands while an employee at Tradeshift,” the lawsuit alleged.

Doe is seeking unspecified lost wages, restitution and damages.