‘SEX RACQUET’ RIP
‘Squash coaches harassed our teen girls’
Members of a ritzy Brooklyn Heights racquet club charge that three creepy house pros have been sexually harassing their teen daughters for years while coaching them in a squash program.
Julie and Edward Burke claim The Heights Casino on Montague Street, “reluctantly” investigated their allegations, but hid its findings and disciplined no one, according to a petition filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
The Burkes say squash pro Laurent Elriani, 42, husband of junior squash program director Linda Elriani and a top player from France, compared the breast sizes of the young female athletes and bragged of his “three-ways on the tour.”
Fellow squash pro Alberto Rezende, the complaint says, “bragged openly to other staff members about having sex on Linda Elriani’s desk with the sister of a junior squash athlete when the club was overrun with chil- dren during a bar mitzvah.”
He also bantered about his sexual high jinks and brazenly displayed sexually explicit photos on his Facebook page, according to court papers.
A third club pro, Fabian Kalaitzis, 43, flaunted his Tinder account, “checking out womens’ profile pictures” in front of the teen girls, the complaint says.
Numerous club members complained to the club board and Julie Burke provided a “detailed description of the harassment,” papers claim.
The club “expended substantial sums” in conducting an investigation, but “club leadership has refused to divulge the results,” telling members the sexual harassment policy is only violated if a club employee “physically touched a teenage athlete.”
Instead, the complaint adds, the club “blamed what it perceives to be overzealous parents of the female teenage athletes.”
The club is housed in a Flemish Revival building constructed in 1905 and is home to the first indoor tennis court in the nation. It is described as a “tony private club whose members had blood as blue as a yachtsman’s fine navy blazer” by Brooklyn’s Brownstoner blog.
The Burkes joined the club, which offers tennis and squash instruction as well as $54 plates of pan-seared filet mignon to members, in 2009.
The Burkes want a judge to order the club to open its books for examination, “so that the club’s adherence to its mission and its own written policies can be restored, and the safety of its teenage athletes ensured.”
The club did not return messages seeking comment.