Horndog bosses at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone turned a dormitory-style apartment for the restaurant’s hottie waitresses into a sleazy house of sin, according to former workers suing for sexual misconduct.
The owners of the Times Square eatery offer free or greatly discounted rooms in a walkup at Lexington Avenue near East 86th Street for the beauty-pageant winners who work as its bikini-clad servers. Former general manager Anthony Rakis and other male managers routinely went “to visit the young female employees who resided there,” according to the women’s lawsuit.
Rakis, who is married with two young children, “had sexual relations with at least one of those female employees, and even impregnated one of the young female models/promoters,” the $600 million federal suit says.
The lawsuit alleges that Rakis had sex with two former Tropic Zone workers, Tiffany Studstill and Angela Rutledge. Neither is a party to the lawsuit. They could not be reached for comment.
At a news conference yesterday held by three of the four plaintiffs, former Tropic Zone manager Giulietta Consalvo – who claims she was drugged and raped by Rakis inside a cab – said he should rot in jail.
“Absolutely, absolutely, I want to see him pay – criminally. Absolutely, he deserves his freedoms taken away from him,” said Consalvo, 36.
Consalvo said she initially tried to address Rakis’ alleged misdeeds out of court because she’s not a “sue-happy person.”
“I went through the proper channels, through the corporate . . . chain of command that they tell you to do when you have such complaints. I went through all the right steps, and my voice went unheard,” she said.
Another plaintiff, ex-office worker Jennifer Brooks, 32, said she “saw things every day that disgusted me, scared me and made me complain.”
Brooks said she wanted revenge against the Riese Organization, which owns 113 restaurants, including the Tropic Zone.
“I want to see the entire organization completely closed down,” Brooks said.
Former bartender Michelle Hasiuk claims that Rakis sexually assaulted her in the restaurant basement.
The lawsuit also accuses celebrity chef David Burke of groping Consalvo and other female workers during a 2006 party.
Burke’s Upper East Side restaurant, davidburke & donatella, yesterday called the allegations “without merit.”
Rakis, who now lives in Virginia and, according to The Washington Post, works as manager of the posh Pose Ultra Lounge outside of Washington, D.C., denied the allegations through his lawyer. The Riese Organization could not be reached.