Luciano Manganella’s Final Sale

Now let the six women tell you something: Luciano Manganella is a nasty old womanizer.

Ten months after the deal went through, a female Jasmine Sola staffer complained about Manganella to New York & Company. Three more soon came forward. In subsequent sworn testimony later filed in court, all four detailed how Manganella had sexually harassed them. While these were the first allegations brought to New York & Company’s attention, they did not represent the first time Manganella (who maintains his innocence in every case), had been accused of such misconduct.

In 1994, a 19-year-old named Sonia Bawa started working at the Harvard Square Jasmine Sola over holidays and summers. Three years later, she had a full-time position as a shop manager. Throughout the summer of 1997, she would later claim in a federal sexual harassment suit against him, Manganella often leered at her during his drop-ins to her store, telling her she had a great body. By December, she alleged, he was getting bolder, saying that if she wore a certain skirt he would visit her cash register more often. At the company holiday party, he made a big deal of kissing her goodbye on the cheek. Early in the New Year, according to Bawa’s suit, Manganella asked if she had ever seen the movie Kama Sutra. He said he enjoyed it because the women in it “were all about pleasing the male.” Then he asked, “Can you teach me the Kama Sutra?”

In July 1998, after Bawa put on a pair of pants to show a female buyer, and Manganella allegedly stuck his hands down the front of them, she decided she’d had enough. According to court documents, she phoned the Manganellas’ house one night and spoke to his wife, Stacey, who was then working as a buyer for her husband’s business. Bawa told Stacey she was considering resigning and asked to speak with Manganella. The following day, she repeated her request. But Manganella, she would later claim, was avoiding her. That day Bawa’s manager broke the news: Bawa was fired.

Bawa filed her lawsuit against Manganella in U.S. District Court in Boston in October 1999. Manganella says he settled out of court for $15,000.

Four years later, a second Jasmine Sola employee, Rachael Kennedy, hit Manganella with further accusations of sexual harassment, an unemployment claim. Manganella says he settled this matter out of court as well.

Though up to that point these were the only known sexual harassment allegations filed against Manganella, roughly a dozen Jasmine employees interviewed for this article say they can scarcely remember a time when whispers about his behavior were not swirling. That no other women came forward is ascribed by some to the way things operated in the company. “There was no clear hierarchy to go to if you had a problem,” remembers Bawa’s manager, Jeannie Dziama. And any woman who went to human resources would have found an audience with similar allegations to share.

Human resources director Donna Burgess was forced to perform oral sex on Manganella five times, the last in 2004, according to her sworn testimony later filed in court, after Manganella allegedly lured her to secluded locations, such as closed offices and a vacant construction site. Burgess didn’t feel she had any choice but to comply. “I was afraid of the way he was so volatile that if I told him no he would punish me by firing me or something worse,” she said in a deposition. During her testimony, she claimed Manganella told her she “gave the best blow job, even over my mistress.”

Lots of people in the office knew about the woman the boss was seeing on the side. Slim and fashionable, and possessing a distinctly European flair, she was hired as a Jasmine Sola sales associate in 1996 and quickly rose to buyer, the same position Manganella’s wife Stacey held. Another Jasmine Sola employee, Laura Ksieniewic, alleged in court that Manganella once gestured to her that he would slit her throat if she ever told New York & Company about his mistress.

Ksieniewic was Manganella’s girl Friday. She was like a big sister to his oldest daughter, even spending one Christmas at the Manganella home. “He would propose that we would have a sexual relationship,” she would later claim during a deposition. “He would make comments about my body. He would make comments about other women that worked for the company.” In the spring of 2006, according to Ksieniewic’s court allegations, Manganella brought her along on a jaunt to Miami. He called it a business trip, but it seemed to her more like an excuse for Manganella to enjoy a rendezvous with the mistress, who was waiting down in Florida. Ksieniewic claimed she felt nervous about the arrangement and wanted to keep her time with Manganella to a minimum, so she took a different flight. At one point during the trip, Manganella told her to speak to his wife on the phone and say he was “being good,” Ksieniewic would recall. Later Ksieniewic met Manganella in a hotel room, where, she alleged, he asked if she wanted to watch pornographic videos. According to her court allegations, he then proposed a threesome with the mistress; the women would get drunk and reenact the dirty pictures and videos. Ksieniewic was relieved when the mistress arrived shortly thereafter, and said she wished to be alone with Manganella.

Though not a member of his inner circle, another female Jasmine Sola employee, merchandiser Liz Chichester, alleged that in May 2006 Manganella invited her, too, on a personal trip to Miami, saying they could disguise the travel as work-related. According to Chichester’s court allegations, he also proposed a getaway to the French Riviera as well. When she told him no, Manganella allegedly took off his wedding ring. If the problem was his age, he said, “you can call me Uncle Luciano and everyone will think that you’re my niece,” Chichester would recall. She again refused the offer. Chichester would also later claim in court that Manganella once told her she was “fucking sexy.” On another occasion, he allegedly whispered in her ear, “Have you ever been with an Italian man?”

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