Last month, when the celebrity chef Mario Batali settled two lawsuits brought by women in Boston who said he had groped them in public in 2017, it seemed as if the long string of allegations against him had reached a conclusion.

Investigations by the New York Police Department into three possible incidents of sexual assault had not resulted in criminal charges. In a 2021 settlement brokered by the New York State attorney general, Mr. Batali and his former business partner Joe Bastianich had agreed to pay a $600,000 settlement to more than 20 employees who were sexually harassed at their restaurants.

Now, in a new documentary film, one of those women identifies herself publicly and gives a detailed account of what she described as a sexual assault by Mr. Batali. Eva DeVirgilis, 43, worked at his flagship restaurant, Babbo, in Greenwich Village. She says that in 2005, after Mr. Batali invited her to an intimate dinner at the Spotted Pig, a nearby gastro pub where he was a regular and an investor, she was assaulted while unconscious and woke up the next morning on the floor of the restaurant’s private dining room.

A hospital report from the next day, which Ms. DeVirgilis shared this week with The New York Times, shows that she had bruised ribs and multiple abrasions, and that she told doctors she believed she had been sexually assaulted and may have been drugged.

The film, “Batali: The Fall of a Superstar Chef,” recounts how Mr. Batali’s star-chef status protected him for...

Read Full Story: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/dining/mario-batali-film-sexual-assault.html