The Las Vegas Review-Journal killed reports about casino mogul Steve Wynn's sexual misconduct in 1998

Casino mogul Steve Wynn, 76, allegedly engaged in a "decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct," The Wall Street Journal wrote last month, with its report leading to Wynn's resignation as the Republican National Committee finance chair. On Monday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal admitted that it also worked on a story about Wynn's sexual misconduct, but kept it from being published … in 1998.

"After killing the article, the newspaper ordered the reporter who wrote it to delete it from the newspaper's computer system," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. But "I always wanted to tell these women's stories," said former courts reporter Carri Geer, who is now the publication's metro editor. "That's why I saved this file for 20 years."

The Review-Journal's 1998 story centered on 11 waitresses at Wynn's Mirage hotel and casino, who brought a lawsuit against their employer after Wynn allegedly told them they did not look good in their uniforms. Some of the women additionally said they were pressured to "accommodate customers sexually," and one server claimed Wynn pressured her into having sex with him after she told him she was a new grandmother.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The report was held after Wynn's lawyers paid for the newspaper to administer lie-detector tests to two of the women accusers. The results indicated that one woman was apparently being truthful, while the second, Cynthia Simmons, failed the test. Simmons had accused Mirage of pressuring her to have sex with customers, and she told the Review-Journal she "was under emotional distress" before the polygraph test. "I couldn't even sleep the night before," she said.

Simmons also expressed her disappointment that the reports about Wynn were silenced by the paper. "I'm shocked anyone thought it was a secret," she said of the allegations. "We all knew this was going on, but nobody spoke up because they were afraid."