Waitress Accuses NYC Chef of Harassment
(AP) A waitress filed a $20 million lawsuit Wednesday against a high-end Japanese restaurant in one of the city’s trendiest areas, claiming its head cook groped her, molested her with kitchen utensils and sexually harassed her.
Satomi Southward, 31, of Fukuoka, Japan, said that from January 2005 into spring she worked without incident at the Megu restaurant, in Manhattan’s TriBeCa area, but in the following months became the victim of sexual “ridicule and insult.”
“I felt very miserable,” Southward, who worked at Megu for 15 months, said during a telephone interview. “I felt I don’t deserve this. I had low self-esteem (because of the harassment) and was unconfident about myself.”
The divorced, single mother of a 2-year-old boy says in court papers she was a waitress in Seattle when Megu’s head chef, Mitsuo Endo, invited her to work at his restaurant.
In papers filed in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court, Southward says that starting in the spring of 2005, Endo began “to degrade, humiliate and intimidate (her) by continually touching Southward’s breasts, buttocks, thighs and hips with his own hands or with various kitchen utensils.” more…
