By TOM LIDDY and LUKAS I. ALPERT
Last updated: 9:55 am
October 10, 2008
Posted: 4:00 am
October 10, 2008
It may be called the "Hottest Place on Earth," but the Hawaiian Tropic Zone runs hot and cold when it comes to sexual harassment, employees say.
Just weeks before a bombshell lawsuit accused top brass of looking the other way when staffers reported being sexually assaulted by the restaurant's general manager last year, owners canned another manager who had been fresh with girls, employees said.
After the firing, female staffers got a letter with their paychecks detailing what had happened and urging them to come forward if they felt harassed.
"All the managers are super-intense on keeping us safe," said a current employee who asked her name not be printed. "I feel bad for our managers now because they have been so helpful to protect us girls. I love working there."
She said the recent incident was innocuous compared to the allegations against ex-general manager Anthony Rakis, whom four employees accused of sexually assaulting them in 2006 and 2007.
"She was uncomfortable because [the manager] asked her to hang out. She felt like it was him coming on to her," the employee said about the recent firing.
The description of policies at the club is a far cry from those laid out in the lengthy federal lawsuit in which four women said their complaints to the restaurant's owners about Rakis' allegedly untoward behavior were roundly ignored.
Former manager Giulietta Consalvo, 36, says Rakis drugged and raped her in her a taxi in 2006. Hostess Stephanie Cheng, 20, says Rakis violently forced her to perform fellatio on him in a stock room.
A month later, Consalvo went to police, the lawsuit said. NYPD officials told The Post the incident was "investigated and no arrests made," and "the case was closed."
Bartender Michelle Hasiuk, 24, accuses Rakis of pinning her up against a wall, ripping off her bikini top and forcing his hand down her pants. And office employee Jennifer Brooks, 32, says Rakis groped her.
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