A former Fox News employee who said she was sexually abused by the network’s late chief executive Roger Ailes has filed a lawsuit under New York state’s Adult Survivors Act.

The suit filed Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court also names 21st Century Fox, the previous moniker for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp., and Bill Shine, a top lieutenant of Ailes and former Fox News president who now works for Nexstar Media Group’s NewsNation.

Laura Luhn, who worked for 15 years at Fox News , said Ailes used his position “in a decades-long cycle of sexual abuse.” The former booker’s relationship with Ailes dated back to the early 1990s, before Fox News was launched, the lawsuit says.

The suit alleges that Ailes, who died in 2017, photographed and videotaped Luhn in compromising positions for “blackmail material” that he described as his “insurance policy” — and made clear to Luhn that any attempt to speak out or stop the abuse would result in “severe personal humiliation and career ruin.”

The suit also said Fox News executives engaged in coordinated public smear campaigns against other victims of sexual abuse. “These cruel campaigns ensured the silence of other victims like Luhn,” the suit says.

In commenting on the suit, a Fox News Media representative said: “This matter was settled years ago, dismissed in subsequent litigation, and is meritless.”

Luhn, who left Fox News in 2011, is able to file suit under the New York state Adult Survivors Act, which provides a “lookback window”...

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