Miss America 2013 winner Mallory Hagan, the subject of several of these emails, told Radio Sputnik's Fault Lines how the "ridiculous" lies affected her within the organization and without.
"The CEO and the chairman of the board of Miss America felt that it was particularly acceptable to call the former Miss America the ‘c' word. They also discussed me and my weight and what my sex life — or rather what they thought they knew about my sex life — was like, which was rather ridiculous. They insinuated that I had a sexually transmitted disease, which was not true. Thousands of people in the organization were made to believe things about me that were totally fabricated and complete lies," Hagan explained to hosts Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan.
"Girls were being told they can't take a picture with me if they run into me in public," Hagan said, explaining how these lies ostracized her from Miss America.
Following the leak of the emails, Randle apologized to Hagan, claiming that the correspondence "does not reflect my values or the values I worked to promote at the Miss America Organization."
On Tuesday, after the top pageant officials resigned from their positions following demands from several contestants and past pageant winners, Hagan told Good Morning America the incident provided an opportunity for women.
"I think this is an opportunity to see how women can come together, support each other, rise up, take over the things they that they want to see happen amd move forward," Hagan said on the show. "I'm really hoping what people see is these women are empowered and work together and we lift each other up."
When asked by Sputnik whether she has experienced pushback for speaking openly about the crass language used to describe her, Hagan responded, "The little pushback that I have experienced is that people are concerned about what this will do for the program in terms of sponsors and partnerships. They are already in the process of revamping the board of directors and putting people in place to run the program responsibly. There needs to be major change."
Dick Clark Productions, a US entertainment production company, cut ties with the Miss America Organization several months ago after learning about the offensive and cruel emails from Brent Adams, a former Miss America employee.
In a statement to Deadline, the entertainment company said, "We were appalled by their unacceptable content and insisted, in the strongest possible terms, that the Miss America Organization [MAO] Board of Directors conduct a comprehensive investigation and take appropriate action to address the situation. Shortly thereafter, we resigned our board positions and notified MAO that we were terminating our relationship with them."
According to Hagan, Adams heard many offensive conversations about women while he worked at Miss America.
"He wasn't really sure what to do about it. And so initially, he took them to Dick Clark and said, ‘Listen, this is the kind of person that is running this program. So what can we do about this?' Dick Clark was the first [actor] in this scenario that tried to create change in this organization."
Hagan also discusses how she got involved with several organizations, such as "Stop It Now," "Safe Horizons" and "Childhood Abuse Prevention Program," all of which are dedicated to combating sexual abuse against children.
Many of the women in my family were sexually abused as children," Hagan told Nixon and Stranahan. "I was very fortunate that I did not experience any of it myself."
