Global Architect, David Adjaye, Accused of Sexual Misconduct
TRIGGER WARNING: SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Sir David Adjaye, recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects' Gold Medal in 2021 and once praised by former President Obama as a "Genius, pure and simple," is reportedly facing allegations of serious misconduct.
Three women, all formerly employed by Adjaye, 56, have accused him and his firm of various sorts of abuse, including sexual assault and harassment by him and others, as well as a toxic work environment that has gone unaddressed for years.
The three women claim that their interactions with Adjaye have negatively impacted their jobs, put their financial stability in jeopardy, and caused them mental anguish.
These ladies, who have asked that their identities remain anonymous, have a lot in common. They are all single mothers, all in their forties, and all well-connected socially, professionally, and through their families. Before working for him, all three women were acquainted with Adjaye through mutual friends and acquaintances.
They joined his company not just to support their families financially, but also because they believed in his goal of showcasing the most talented African-Americans in the profession. One of the ladies commented that she found his ambition to revolutionise African architecture especially motivating.
They stated they needed to speak up about what happened to them so that other women wouldn't have to go through what they did, and so that the architect's private behaviour wouldn't remain hidden any longer. The Financial Times has made an effort in all three cases to verify the women's claims by conducting interviews with witnesses and examining emails, documents, and texts sent or received at the time in question.
Before taking on civic projects like a museum in Denver, a school of management in Moscow, and, most notably, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, Adjaye was commissioned to design private residences for artists, retail stores, and art fairs.
In 2017, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, and in November of last year, King Charles III designated him a member of the illustrious Order of Merit. Many in his predominantly white industry consider him as a leader in the fight for diversity. He previously commented in an interview, "It's a heavy thing being put on a gilded pedestal."
Adjaye's attorney said that the women had "their own grievances" against his client. Adjaye said, "I absolutely reject any claims of sexual misconduct, abuse, or criminal wrongdoing," in answer to queries regarding the allegations made by the three women. He added, "These allegations are untrue, distressing for me and my family and run counter to everything I stand for.”
"I am ashamed to say that I entered into relationships that, though entirely consensual, blurred the boundaries of my professional and personal lives," he said. "I am deeply sorry. To restore trust and accountability, I will be immediately seeking professional help in order to learn from these mistakes to ensure that they never happen again.”
The middle of 2018 saw the relocation of two ladies to Ghana in pursuit of what they believed to be an exceptional professional opportunity: working with Adjaye Associates to open an office in Accra. Maya and Gene were inspired by Adjaye's goal to make the firm the preeminent architectural agency in Africa.
Both Maya and Gene, who had brought their families to Ghana, said that they were frequently paid late and had trouble getting work visas from the Accra office. According to conversations with the women, their friends, and their families, as well as documentation like account details, the two women were struggling financially and confused about their immigration status.
According to Adjaye's attorney, the Ghana office "functioned as a start-up" in fiscal years 2018–19. Although "cash flow issues" and "an initial lack of structure and process" plagued the company in its early months, these "shortcomings" were eventually ironed out.
Maya and Gene were hoping to have an in-person lobbying opportunity with Adjaye when he visited Accra in September of 2018. After Adjaye invited them to supper at his corporate apartment, they knew this was their moment.
Maya and Gene both claim that shortly after entering the apartment, Adjaye left the living area and returned wearing a robe. He brought the two women into his bedroom and made sexual advances on them, touching and grabbing Maya. This triggered an argument with Gene. She had been friends with Adjaye for more than a decade and on three occasions had had sex with him. She claims she told him their connection from there on would be entirely professional before accepting the Accra position.
“I said, ‘No, this is not right’ . . . I said he was our employer. But he persisted. He applied more pressure and the feeling was, if you don’t do this, you’re silly, you’re stupid,” said Gene. She left the bedroom, saying to him that she was on her period, and stood outside by the door, unwilling to leave the apartment without Maya but unable to watch what was happening in the bedroom.
Maya claimed that after drinking several strong drinks at dinner, she became inebriated and was dragged into the bedroom and onto Adjaye's bed. According to Maya, he urged her, "You've just got to do this." She continued: “I felt overpowered, both emotionally and physically . . . There was this domineering feeling of ‘I’m going to have my way with you, and that’s it.’”
Like many people who have suffered trauma, Maya has a difficult time recalling the details of what happened thereafter. However, she recalled "feeling that his penis was on me" and claimed it was an assault. A few minutes later, they emerged from the bedroom, and Gene immediately re-confronted Adjaye, accusing him of misusing his authority. According to the women, they broke down in tears after he urged them to go and returned to Maya's apartment in the same complex.
Maya claims that Adjaye called her the following day and asked her to meet him outside of their building so that he could withdraw cash from an ATM. After that, he handed her cash equal to about 4,000 Ghanaian cedi (about £770). Adjaye did not address the events of the previous night or offer an apology. Maya claimed that she was in a tight financial spot at the time, so she accepted the money and promptly gave some to Gene, saying, "You need this as you need to buy food."
Three of Gene's acquaintances claim that she spilt the beans to them about what went down at Adjaye's apartment and the state of her finances. One, who spoke to Gene the day after the apartment incident, said she was “very upset and shocked, in disbelief at Adjaye’s behaviour and . . . what he thought he was entitled to” from the two women.
Adjaye's attorney confirmed the three had dinner together, talked about moving, and ended the night with a drink at his place with Maya and Gene.
Adjaye, however, "categorically denies forcing [Maya] to enter his bedroom and sexually assaulting her" and "strongly denies making any sexual advances towards" them. Adjaye's attorney also refuted reports that his client met with or handed money to Maya the following day, saying that his client's firm had no record of such a transaction. However, Adjaye did make a withdrawal on that day, the lawyer said, but only "to pay for a police escort to assist with driving through traffic" on a site inspection.
The attorney said that the "extremely cordial" texts that Adjaye, Maya, and Gene sent in the weeks and months that followed were proof of the good working relationship between the two employees and their boss.
Since he was their boss, Maya and Gene claimed they had to get along with him. Both ladies stated they needed the money and didn't want to uproot their kids' lives again, so finding work was a priority.
Maya decided to stay with the company, and in the middle of 2019, she travelled to South Africa to establish a new venture alongside Adjaye.
Maya and Adjaye had separate flights out of Johannesburg's OR Tambo International Airport the day following the launch.
What transpired after they arrived is a point of contention between them. Maya claimed that Adjaye ordered her to "get in the bathroom" as they strolled through the airport terminal. She says she didn't understand what was going on at the time, but she figured they were just repacking their bags.
Adjaye allegedly pushed Maya against the baby-changing table in the disabled restroom, reached under her skirt, pulled aside her panties, and pushed his penis against her after they entered. She claimed that, despite her surprise, she pushed him away and cried, "No, David!" According to her, after he ejaculated in the sink, he got dressed and left.
“I felt so ill, I felt so worthless, like dirt, like nothing,” Maya said. She claims to have no memory of the journey back to Ghana since she was so traumatised by the attack.
For the next 18 months, Maya confided in her mother, a cousin, and a coworker about the claims she had heard about Adjaye. Maya was "always making comments [about Adjaye] like 'He's not who I thought he was,'" according to one of her former coworkers. The phrase "kept telling me to be careful with him" was also attributed to Maya.
Adjaye, through his attorney, refuted Maya's account. The attorney verified that Adjaye had asked Maya to accompany him into the airport washroom, but explained that this was done so that he could transfer some carpets to her luggage away from the "chaos and crowds of the check-in area." (He claims that they discussed and agreed to a rug swap the night before.) He categorically denies the claim, saying, "I did not engage in sexual activity with her during this encounter."
Maya claims that she fell into deep melancholy, anger, and suicidal thoughts in the months that followed, which was corroborated by her friends and family. A relative of hers remarked, "She was so depressed, so insecure, she had fallen apart at the seams."
When Maya tried to complain to the company that fall about the alleged sexual assault, she was referred to a meeting with Adjaye in Ghana by an assistant in London. She claimed she confronted him on his October visit to Accra, but he ignored her. She tried to report the assault to the authorities in Ghana, but her efforts were futile. She was informed that because the criminal allegation occurred in another nation, they did not have the authority to investigate it.
Maya was let go without warning in January 2020, eight months after the restroom incident. After the Accra office deducted money it had advanced to her, she was left with a settlement of $1,475, and she claims that on the evening she was fired, a cease and desist letter from Adjaye's lawyers in Ghana was delivered to her apartment demanding that she stop spreading rumours about Adjaye.
She spent the following few months trying to get her family life in order while she was out of work. She wrote Adjaye a private email in May of 2020, detailing the "inconceivable sexual violation" she had experienced at his hands and labelling him a predator. According to the letter obtained by the FT, she added, "I have lost EVERYTHING and have absolutely NOTHING to lose," before suggesting he compensate her for the assault and loss of earnings following her dismissal. A second cease-and-desist letter followed, this one accusing her of extortion.
Maya reported Adjaye to the South African police for criminal activity in September of 2021. When contacted by the FT, the police confirmed that they had "registered" the complaint but provided no other details.
According to Adjaye's London attorney, "this allegation was framed well after the event in order to extract a payment" from Adjaye or his company due to Maya's dissatisfaction with her dismissal for, in his opinion, subpar performance on the job. Maya strongly refutes the claims made in Adjaye's legal letter that he and she had a "intimate relationship" before she joined the company.
Maya claims she does not remember sending the second email, but that she made the same complaints and requested compensation in the first letter, which Adjaye brought to the FT through his lawyer.
Gene…
Gene's term as Adjaye's employee likewise ended badly. She needed a loan for a year's worth of rent to cover the up-front cost necessary to find a place to live in Accra, and she had been offered one. But when the expected sum did not materialise, her financial position worsened rapidly. She mentioned that she had to decide between "buying diapers or... baked beans and pasta."
She spent a day driving around the city with her family's things after being forced to move out of the corporate apartment offered upon her arrival. “That stint in Ghana decimated me financially,” she said. To finance the purchase of a new house, she ultimately turned to a bank loan, which she obtained through her contacts. Her good friends gave her some quick cash. Given her close relationship with Adjaye, she saw this as "a betrayal" on his part.
Gene was invited into a meeting with a senior executive in the Accra office four months after the apartment incident, where she was summarily fired and offered two months' salary and a check for $10,000. She received $40,000 after the two parties agreed to a financial settlement in May 2019.
Gene stated the occurrences have seriously disrupted her family life, including forcing her to uproot her family once again and putting the custody of one of her children in jeopardy, and have had a disastrous effect on her health, causing despair and considerable weight loss.
To quote Adjaye's attorney: "concerns about their conduct and capabilities, which were raised by other employees" led to Maya and Gene's dismissal. The two ladies claim they were never informed of any such risks before their dismissal.
When it comes to dissatisfaction with working for Adjaye and his firm, they are not alone.
According to the FT's interviews with 13 former workers, the Accra and London offices were both chaotic and poorly managed, and employees were sometimes paid less than they should have been given the amount of work they were expected to complete. One person put it this way: "The main priority is to feed this personality cult."
More than 200 people are employed by the company, which has locations in both New York and London in addition to Accra. Lady Ashley Adjaye, Adjaye's wife, is the global head of research at the company.
According to one junior architect employed in the UK for the Accra office in 2018, she was told to relocate to Ghana without first receiving a work visa or contract. After arriving in Ghana, she was issued a visa and, later, a formal contract. She felt "very taken advantage of" because her salary was cut from what had been offered initially, she had to work "toxic" hours, and a senior employee had been abusive towards her.
A second source claimed Adjaye had advised her to play up her sexuality to land a contract. He advised me, "If you have to flirt with him to achieve something in the interest of Adjaye, just do it. I was stunned, I couldn’t even respond,” she said. Attorney Adjaye claims he does not know giving such a directive.
Dunia...
Adjaye met the third woman, Dunia, in the United Kingdom in January of 2019, at an industry event. Two weeks later, he invited her out to dinner on the pretext of listening to her thoughts on potential business ventures. She was overjoyed to be asked for input because she has always admired Adjaye's work. "He was an African cultural icon, and we were proud of him," she said.
Adjaye asked her to drive him to the Royal Academy of Arts after their central London dinner, when it was already too late to go there on foot. Dunia claims that Adjaye shoved her up against an alcove as they moved through the building, taking advantage of his status as a member of the institution to get past a security guard. "He told me to be a good girl and be quiet," she revealed. As his tongue pressed into her mouth, she was taken aback and momentarily paralysed. She described how "he was pressed up against me with his penis erect."
Despite being appalled by his behaviour, Dunia still wanted to prove to Adjaye that she had value as a professional, which is why she started working for him informally as a communications and marketing specialist. She claimed that during the course of the next months, she was subjected to a string of controlling and emotionally abusive sexual sessions with him, but she still refused to call their relationship by that name. She claimed that because of his prominence in the arts community, she felt compelled to work for him for free and give in to his sexual demands.
Her awareness that she "needed to get out of this" by the summer of 2019 was accompanied with a healthy dose of trepidation. She recalled thinking, "My career is going to be over if he's pissed off with me." "His network is vast," she said, "and he can block opportunities and give me a bad reputation." She claims this is why, despite feeling violated and embarrassed by his behaviour, she signed a formal three-month contract with his company. In her perspective, he wouldn't turn her into a professional if he stopped seeing her like a servant.
Despite his dominating behaviours, Dunia claimed she tried to appease him and make herself agreeable to him. He told me I had to do something to make him "feel special," so I did. She constantly complemented him, took his requests for personal photos of herself, and drove him around. She was instructed not to call him but to respond to his calls within three rings. For example, "If he says he misses me, I was to say I miss him too," as expressed by Dunia. “Even when he was wrong, I often apologised to him to calm him down.”
She believes he publicly and privately criticised her, questioned her knowledge, and ultimately caused her to lose faith in herself. She claims that Adjaye also put her down because of her colour, asking if she was "black enough" to appreciate his goals for the firm and Africa. Like her companions Maya and Gene, Dunia considers herself to have "lighter-skinned" black women.
Dunia claims he dictated her wardrobe and forbade her from wearing makeup because he was self-conscious about his darker skin and worried it would rub off on him. He would playfully pull at her hair to make sure she wasn't using fake extensions. According to her, he referred to black women as "low-hanging fruit," or "easy, cheap — like we are sitting waiting to be picked," in an offensive way. Then she said, "If I was white, he would have had respect for my body."
On one occasion, she thought she was going on a business trip with coworkers, but instead she was going to be staying in Adjaye's bedroom. “It felt like entrapment,” she said. In his own words, "I was never imprisoned, I was never locked in a room, but [I went] thinking there would be four people there and it was just me and him."
After her three-month contract ended, she continued to work with Adjaye on an informal basis, but she also made efforts to reduce her involvement with him. The coronavirus lockdown in March of 2020 allowed Dunia to cut ties. She finally said that she was relieved by the pandemic because "it saved me from him."
Dunia says she was more interested in an admission of culpability from Adjaye than in any financial outcome when she filed him a legal letter accusing him of sexual assault in February 2022. Adjaye responded to her lawyer's letter by saying that the two of them had a mutually consenting relationship based on their WhatsApp chats. She felt defeated and desperate, so she looked for other legal options. She developed close relationships with Maya and Gene, two other women who had worked under Adjaye. Despite being represented by a human rights and whistleblowing organisations, the three women have had tense relationships in the past.
Dunia claims that her mental health has worsened, and that she now experiences social anxiety and suicide ideation. Dunia's friends say she went from being an outgoing and exuberant person to isolating herself after her interactions with Adjaye. Her career has hit a wall, and she has given up hope of ever realising her former goals. A close acquaintance described her as sad, worried, and more guarded recently. Someone more commented, "Someone who was so passionate has been broken by it all."
Coercive control is an attack on everything about you that makes you, you," said Emma Katz, an associate professor of sociology at Durham University. It’s like somebody is trying to turn you into a puppet on a string and take away your rights, your autonomy, your independence.” The shame generated in the victim by their treatment can also explain why they do not try and leave the perpetrator: “People can keep pursuing the same course of action because changing course means facing up to how bad things are, facing up to how traumatised they’ve been by it, so it can be better to keep your head down, stay numb, keep complying and not face up to it.”
Adjaye's attorney claims that his client "categorically denies" Dunia's account of events and "exhibited abusive and controlling behaviour towards [her]," but admitting that Adjaye kissed her at the Royal Academy. He said that their conversations at the time prove that their interactions were voluntary. Adjaye, through his attorney, "rejects entirely the overall portrayal of his conduct during their relationship, including the claims about his attitudes towards black women and the imputation that his behaviour was 'belittling.'"
However Adjaye “accepts that sexual interactions continued with [Dunia] after she started providing professional services to the company, and that this was inappropriate, as was the decision to recommend her as a consultant given that they were engaged in a relationship”.
Adjaye, according to his attorney, is aware that it is not consistent with good governance or suitable levels of personal conduct to hire people with whom he has had personal, intimate ties. He claimed that the corporation has begun formalising its recruitment and employment processes in early 2020 but did not provide specifics.
The three ladies argued that even if these alterations are accurate, they are not nearly enough to safeguard others from having to go through what they did.
"David has been able to hoodwink so many people into believing he is who he says he is," Maya remarked. “He does whatever he wants, however he wants.”