Dominatrix gives Treasury painful lesson

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April 12, 2005

Times
By Chris Ayres
A sexual harassment lawsuit in California has transformed the department’s normally staid image



A RETIRED dominatrix who traded her wooden paddle for a calculator is to be paid $60,000 (£32,000) in damages after taking a job at the US Treasury Department, where she ended up working for an abusive former client.

Susan Peacher, 45, from San Francisco, claimed that her boss sexually harassed her by trying to kiss her in the lift, telling her that she had luscious lips and repeatedly asking for “sessions”.

Ms Peacher, more used to giving rather than taking abuse, filed a lawsuit. The case has transformed the image of the Treasury Department, an organisation better known for tax refunds and social security payments than leather whips and sadomasochistic sex.

When the former dominatrix — known as Mistress Celeste to those who visited her San Francisco dungeon — objected to her boss’s behaviour, he made himself her direct supervisor and began to give her negative performance reviews.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1565434,00.html