A female photographer is suing her former boss, the head of Pier 59 Studios at Chelsea Piers, for sexual harassment. Maryam Sayigh's $2 million suit accuses Federico Pignatelli of sunbathing nude in front of her, propositioning her, and forcing her to pick up women for him.
Sayigh, 35, says that she started working for Pignatelli as his executive assistant in June 2008, and was soon swept into a European business trip with him. She was cajoled into sleeping with him aboard his boat in the Mediterranean Sea, a decision she felt "was the only way she could stay at the company." She claims to only have slept with him twice, then rebuffed his later advances, and never got the promotion she thought she was promised: she says he promised that he would open a modeling agency for her to run and that she could be his No. 2 at Pier 59. But by February 2009, she was fired.
Pignatelli refutes her claims about promising her a job, and denies they ever had sex, saying she's too "unattractive" for him: "She's not the type of woman I would sleep with. I have plenty of women I can sleep with, so why would I sleep with an employee?" Pignatelli says that Sayigh was a disgruntled employee, a "low-quality woman," and that she was extorting him.
Sayigh responded to the badmouthing in the News today, showing off pictures of herself with Pignatelli in Saint Tropez, France, and the island of Sardinia: "If you're that into yourself, then you don't let yourself be seen in the most prestigious places in the world with an unattractive woman...I don't think I'm ugly."
