Two former employees of the
celebrity chef Michael Chiarello have filed two lawsuits against Chiarello and
his restaurant group, alleging sexual harassment and labor violations.
Chiarello is a very well known chef who owns the restaurant group, Gruppo
Chiarello, which include the restaurants Coqueta and Yountville. Katherine Page
and Asja Sever, who former employees of Coqueta are suing Chiarello claiming
that he and other important staff members at the restaurant created a sexually
hostile and abusive environment.
The website EATER, shared
this news on March 15th and gave graphic examples of the horrendous
things that Chiarello allegedly did and said. In addition to inappropriately
touching and gesturing towards employees and customers, both male and female, Page
and Sever claim Chiarello said vulgarities to his managers in regards to hiring
employees such as, “If you don’t want to f*k them, don’t hire them.” The
examples are extensive and can be viewed at the link to the article attached
below.
One of Chiarello’s
executive chefs, Dominick Maietta, has also been named in the suit as
participating in such harassment with Chiarello, and he is listed as a
defendant to Chiarello in this case. In addition to the sexual harassment
claims, “the restaurant failed to pay wages and overtime, manipulated
clocks and timesheets and forced front of the house employees to pool their
tips with the kitchen staff.”
The article actually did not employ any rape myths initially,
and remained very factual and unbiased. However, on March 16th, the
article was updated with a statemend from Chiarello’s publicist claiming that
all of the allegations are false. His publicist further went on to paint the
audience a picture of who Chiarello is, explaining how he “is the son of
immigrant family, a true American success story, who became the acclaimed chef
he is today by using the skills he learned from watching his mother cook when
he was a young boy and caring about the people with whom he worked.” This is employing
the rape myth that sexual offenders are only monsters with horror stories who
prey on victims, and, since Chiarello is a hard-working, family man, he could
not possibly have conducted himself in such an atrocious manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment