A Queens real estate boss played a creepy game of footsie with his much younger assistant, holding her feet and removing her shoes so could he look at her ingrown toenail, she claimed in a $5 million lawsuit.
Bryanna O’Connell was an administrative assistant at H&R Real Estate Investment Trust in 2023 when chief engineer Paul Sciallis subjected her to an “onslaught” of perverted abuse, including urinating with the bathroom door open and turning his body so she could see his penis.
He also had an obsession with her feet, she alleged in court papers.
Sciallis, 47, held “Foot Rub Friday” each week in the Canadian company’s Long Island City office and offered to let O’Connell, then 24, go home early if she massaged his tootsies, told her her feet were “too ugly to make any money off them,” and once demanded she show him an ingrown toenail, according to lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“He told me, ‘Let me take a look, I can fix it for you,’” she recalled to The Post, describing how Sciallis grabbed alcohol from an office medical kit.
“I didn’t want him examining my infected toe. He was like, ‘Sit down let me look,’ he got down on the floor and started taking off my shoe.
“I started shaking my leg, he ripped off my shoe, I was like, ‘No, no I don’t want to do this,’ ” said O’Connell. “It was just creepy to me.”
He also allegedly offered her cash to “rub him with lotion, clean his ears, massage him or feed him, which O’Connell refused to do,” she said in court documents, adding that the alleged harassment “started from day one.”
He showed the assistant photos he’d secretly taken of her bending over, according to the lawsuit.
O’Connell said Sciallis would often bring her to the roof of their building where he showed her pictures of one of his previous assistants and talked about his relationship with her.
“It became clear he thought [I] was part two,” she said.
“It really shows you that when a company has a policy in a handbook that says sexual harassment is not permitted, it really doesn’t mean anything,” said O’Connell’s lawyer, Brian Heller.
H&R REIT didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Sciallis couldn’t be reached.
