Fourteen employees at a nightclub called Verboten in the Williamsburg borough in Brooklyn, New York filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the married couple who owns the club. They are saying they’ve had enough of the repeated sexual advances and explicit conversations about the sexual preferences and prowess of the owners and the wife’s boyfriend. The couple is also being accused of barring Black people from attending events in the venue.
According to the lawsuit filed in Eastern District Court, John Perez and his wife, Jen Schiffer, “run the nightclub with a complete disregard for the law and have committed a number of acts against their employees.” The employees who filed the suit say Schiffer would regularly go into detail about her sex life with patrons at the club and the sexual positions she preferred.
Schiffer’s boyfriend, 24-year-old employee Dylan Schwartz, is also mentioned in the suit for allegedly harassing fellow workers. Court documents say Schwartz had said, “My d— can stay hard for a long time,” and “Are you having a bad day? You should let me f— you.”
The suit alleges that Schiffer did nothing to correct her boyfriend’s inappropriate behavior, but instead, she “became jealous at the unwanted attention Mr. Schwartz paid to them, blamed the women who were being harassed and retaliated against them.”
“She said ‘I know, I know, I’m trying my best to keep a lid on that,’” Steven Suchowieski, a club employee, told NY Daily News. “Instead, she then targeted those employees, those girls. She basically was jealous of them.”
Schiffer is also accused of not paying workers, stealing employee tips, filling premium liquor bottles with less expensive liquor, and discriminating against Black customers. An employee named Darrin Morda claims that when he booked a private party with a number of Black people in attendance, Schiffer became upset, saying, “What are all the Black people doing here? You cannot book a Black people party!”
Morda says Schiffer told him the club was unable to hold private events for Black customers and that she promised the police that there wouldn’t be Black people at the club. Schiffer has denied this allegation.
Schiffer and Perez are also in hot water with investors and employees who are accusing the couple of fraud and mismanagement by concealing revenue, rerouting deposits into their personal accounts and recording fraudulent expenditures.
