CEO made employees visit strip clubs and sex shops, NY lawsuit says. He just resigned
A company CEO made his employees visit strip clubs and sex shops and then harassed a worker who reported the accusations, according to a lawsuit filed by the former employee in New York.
He is also accused of forcing employees to visit brothels and engage with prostitutes while on overseas business trips paid for by Servotronics Inc., an electronic parts supplier, among several separate allegations.
Now, Kenneth D. Trbovich has resigned as the company’s CEO and president after an internal investigation found “grounds for his termination,” Servotronics Inc. — based in Elma, 17 miles east of Buffalo — said in a Dec. 27 news release.
The company said the nearly 6-month long investigation was launched June 8, one day after a worker filed the complaint against his former supervisor who had power over the terms of his employment, according to the lawsuit.
“Trbovich has engaged in a pervasive pattern of severely offensive and relentless sexual harassment of male employees like (the worker), among other unlawful discriminatory and retaliatory conduct,” the lawsuit states.
Trbovich was told grounds for his termination were found on Dec. 1, according to the company, and a Dec. 22 meeting was scheduled for him to address the findings. He resigned as CEO and president on Dec. 21.
After the lawsuit’s filing, an attorney for Trbovich called the allegations “ridiculously false and spurious,” the Buffalo News reported.
McClatchy News has reached out to Robert Boreanaz, identified as Trbovich’s attorney by WKBW, for comment.
Alongside accusations of forcing male employees to visit strip clubs, brothels and engage with prostitutes, Trbovich relentlessly harassed male employees by showing them photos of topless women, using “sexually charged language in the workplace,” and encouraging female staff to “date” male employees, the lawsuit said.
Trbovich had male employees join him on strip club visits while overseas on paid business trips, according to the complaint.
Additionally, a male employee was forced to go to a “pagan ‘bonding ceremony’” — described as a faux “wedding ceremony” — between Trbovich and a female contractor of the company while in Ohio on a “business trip” paid for by Servotronics Inc., the lawsuit detailed.
During that Ohio business trip, Trbovich is accused of forcing the worker who filed the lawsuit to “stand guard” outside a tent while Trbovich had sexual intercourse with the female contractor “to whom he had been ‘bonded’ in the pagan ceremony,” according to the complaint.
He also ordered male employees to excessively drink alcohol, the lawsuit said, and join him at trips to sex shops.
Trbovich is also accused of ordering employees to drive him to engage in sexual acts with female contractors of the company during business hours.
When a whistleblower complaint of his alleged conduct was made to the company, Trbovich repeatedly said he “would find out” and “that person’s career is over,” according to multiple witnesses, the lawsuit said.
The worker who took part in the whistleblower investigation was then harassed by Trbovich, according to the complaint.
“Eventually, (the worker) was ‘furloughed’ with a 40% reduction in pay, which later was increased to approximately 60% reduction in pay,” the lawsuit said.
Trbovich created a “hostile” environment at Servotronics Inc. where employees — many of whom resigned at an “alarming rate” — were belittled daily, according to the lawsuit.
They “repeatedly expressed to (the worker) their individual and collective fear of Trbovich and their reluctance to oppose his actions for fear of retribution or retaliation,” according to the lawsuit. “They often asked (the worker) to try to calm Trbovich down and reason with him.”
Shortly after the worker was hired in 2012, he went to Germany with Trbovich on a business trip on Nov. 28 through Dec. 2, according to the complaint, where the worker was forced “to drink heavily on multiple occasions.”
The worker witnessed Trbovich and others encourage young sales representatives to inhale alcohol vapors and when the worker refused to participate, Trbovich harassed him, the lawsuit said.
Later on, Trbovich tried to pressure the worker into having sexual intercourse with two women from the Netherlands, according to the lawsuit. Then, Trbovich is accused of instigating the women and two other employees from Italy to remove the worker’s shirt and pour hot wax on his chest.
“This was a humiliating and permanently damaging incident,” the lawsuit said, adding that no action was taken against Trbovich after the worker reported his conduct and the harassment continued for the next eight years.
In the years after, the worker was pressured into at least one “mandatory” strip club visit during a trip to Las Vegas in 2013, ordered to watch porn with Trbovich during another trip to Germany in 2013 and told to dress in armor while Trbovich had his pagan bonding marriage ceremony in Ohio in 2014, according to the complaint.
Trbovich would go on to mock the worker in the Servotronics Inc. office in front of other employees for being “terrible at guarding a sex tent” during the pagan ceremony in Ohio, the lawsuit said.
In the wake of Trbovich’s resignation, he still remains a director for the company, according to the news release.
“The Company does not intend to renominate him for election to the Board at the 2022 annual meeting of shareholders,” it said.
An attorney for the worker, Matthew Miller, said that Servotronics Inc. requested a judge for the case to be thrown out and that a judge’s decision has not been made yet, according to WKBW.
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