Four female employees at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in New York's Times Square claim widespread sexual harassment at the restaurant escalated into rape and forcible sodomy, the New York Post reports.
The women — a former senior manager, a bartender, a hostess and an office assistant — claim their former senior manager, Anthony Rakis, subjected them to months of lewd behavior, according to a $600 million-plus lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday.
Rakis, a married, 40-year-old father of two, allegedly was given "full reign" by the Riese Organization — which owns the restaurant — to "sexually assault, molest, batter and rape the female employees," the lawsuit claims.
"In that sense, he was not unlike a pedophile at a daycare center," the lawsuit read.
Two days after allegedly drugging and raping ex-senior manager Guilietta Consalvo in a taxi in September 2006, the lawsuit claims Rakis said: "I am so sorry, my beheavior was so disgusting. It wasn't me. That was the person I was a long time ago. I used to be a bad person, but my wife turned me around."
Reached by phone by the Post, Rakis, who was fired months after the alleged attack, claimed the allegations were false.
"This is all kind of a shock to me, to be honest with you," he told the Post. "I guess I'm going to have to call the Hawaiian Tropic guys and see what they're saying."
The four women claim they were forced to quit after making their complaints known, the Post reported.
Riese Organization Vice Chairman Jamie Galler told the Post he couldn't comment because he had yet to see the lawsuit.
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