James Ray
(Dennis A. Clark)
A Park Avenue lawyer desperately touted the perks of polygamy to a female paralegal — and asked the woman to be his “third wife,” she claims in a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Sarbrina Rafi, 27, claims her boss, James R. Ray, 50, boasted about having several wives while harassing her for weeks — and even forced her to feed him with chopsticks at a Korean restaurant, the court papers say.
“At the beginning I laughed it off, [but] he became serious about it,” Rafi told The Post yesterday.
“His expression changed from jovial to aggressive. I got pretty scared.”
Ray hit on Rafi shortly after she joined the Ray and Associates firm in December, court papers state.
He bragged daily about having sex with several partners and being “married to multiple women,” the suit states.
On Jan. 7, he proposed that Rafi — a recent law school grade — try out the “polygamist lifestyle,” the lawsuit notes.
Three days later, a female co-worker was fired for refusing to talk to Ray about sex and polygamy, court papers state.
“He was describing his sexual encounters with women. How he would say he met this woman at a club and she was from a Middle Eastern country,” Rafi said.
“He said, ‘You’re from a middle eastern background too.’”
On Jan. 15, Ray demanded Rafi go to dinner with him at Korea Palace on Park Street on Jan. 15, the lawsuit claims. She didn’t want to go — but agreed to anyway because she feared losing her job.
At the Midtown restaurant, Ray insisted on talking about porn, saying “it’s the key to a successful relationship” — and then urged her to become his “third wife,” the court papers state.
Rafi told him she had a boyfriend but he kept pressuring her, eventually forcing her to feed him with chop sticks in front of other patrons.
“He said, ‘I’ll only eat it if you feed it to me.’ I was like, ‘What?’ …Honestly, I was like terrified at that point,” she said.
“I’m picking up the chopsticks and my hands are shaking. I think I dropped the shrimp at one point. I picked it up again with the chopsticks and then he opens his mouth and closes his eyes as if he was in love with me.
“It was humiliating for me to sit there with this much older man forcing me to feed him his food.”
He then went on to talk about lesbian porn, she said.
The come-on disturbed her so much she ran out with him giving chase, court papers state.
Rafi would then wear several layers of clothes at the office to thwart his sexual advances. She even wore coats indoors, which irked Ray, according to the suit.
“I actually felt sick working him for him,” she said.
Ray got so mad about her clothing that he finally fired her in February.
Her lawsuit was filed yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court by lawyers Michael Borrelli and Alexander Coleman.
Ray could not be reached for comment yesterday.