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A high-flying exec at a multimillion-dollar firm raped his assistant and choked her — telling her she was “sweeter when half-conscious” — in a revolting “Mad Men’’-like office environment, according to a lawsuit.
Michael Gowl, Jr., a married dad of five and the then-executive chairman of PAX Services Group, a roofing company, displayed rampant “deviant, predatory and reprehensible conduct” during his reign of terror, alleged a new legal filing that reads like a corporate psycho-sexual horror story.
“I only wanted to have a job,” Gowl’s ex-assistant, a New York City resident and African immigrant now in her late 20s, told The Post.
But “I’d rather be homeless than take that s–t anymore.”
The woman — who filed her suit anonymously in Manhattan federal court this month — alleged in the document that her boss drugged and sexually assaulted her three times during supposed “business” outings.
She said their professional relationship first took a dark turn just weeks after she was hired in late 2023, when Gowl texted her uncomfortable personal questions about growing up Muslim barely a month after his wife gave birth to their fifth child, according to her suit.
He quizzed her from the hospital’s newborn intensive-care unit, claimed the court document — which Gowl slammed to The Post as full of “outright lies’’ geared toward a “financial windfall.’’
The woman — who PAX and its new owner, New State, deny was ever even technically employed by the firm — said in her suit that in January 2024, Gowl lured her the Manhattan hotspot Nobu, seemingly for a “business meeting.’’
The woman, who is highly educated and speaks four languages, said that after she sipped a drink she had left briefly unattended, she felt “euphoric, dizzy, and disoriented,” according to court documents.
Gowl then got her into his nearby hotel room, stripped to his boxers and tried to “force a kiss” while showing her explicit videos, the filing said.
“You’ll be mad at me tomorrow,” Gowl whispered as he placed his head between her legs, the lawsuit alleged.
The woman broke free and vomited in the bathroom, only to have Gowl later “FaceTime” her to dangle a fake promotion as an apology, the suit claimed.
“He cried … doing this whole thing of like, ‘I’m sorry,’ ” she told The Post.
“I thought if I can just swallow this [incident], it’s OK,’’ said the woman, claiming Gowl promised her a promotion early on to let her run mergers and acquisitions.
“Every single day I went through was like survival mode.”
But “survival mode” became an unbearable nightmare in the following months, according to her suit.
She was drugged and raped at Gowl’s home in Florida and during a “work trip” to the Bahamas, her suit alleged.
In Florida, Gowl raped her in his “marital bed” while his infant’s crib sat just feet away, court papers claimed.
He also choked her, later bragging it was his “favorite thing” because it made her “quieter and sweeter when half-conscious,” the filing said.
During the Bahamas trip, Gowl “forcibly removed her clothing, penetrated her, and ejaculated on her” during another time she felt drugged, the suit alleged.
The assistant confronted him about him potentially slipping something to her, according to court papers.
He responded, “I took my chance because I don’t know when I will be alone with you again,” the suit alleged.
All the while, Gowl was boasting he “only hires women under 30 with big breasts … and questionable morals,” the woman said in her lawsuit.
He also told her to “stop dressing like a mormon” and “show more cleavage,” the suit claimed.
There was racism, too, court documents claimed.
Gowl once texted the woman that a young relative of his “loves a good n—–r joke,’’ and the boss also excluded a black colleague from big meetings, telling the plaintiff that the man “is a n—–r and he smells weird,” according to the suit.
“They were acting literally like ‘Mad Men,’ ” the woman said in the suit of the office atmosphere, referring to the hit TV show about a fictitious sexed-up sometimes out-of-control ad agency in the 1960s.
“There was a lot of degrading, belittling jokes about … my background,” the woman said.
PAX and New State responded that while they take the woman’s claims “seriously,” they deny condoning any wrongdoing and that she was not even technically on their payroll.
Pax also claimed to The Post that Gowl has not been involved in the Maryland-based company since early 2024, although his bio appeared on the company’s Web site at least as late as this past June, according to Google’s archive.
The woman told The Post she was paid through a related LLC, which is also a defendant in the suit.
She said that when she would confront Gowl about his alleged sexual attacks on her, “He would cry.
“He would use his children. He would use his marriage,” she told The Post.
When the plaintiff finally reached her last straw and said he had to stop, the retaliation was “immediate,’’ the document said.
Gowl threatened her life, warning: “I will come after you and end your life,” then fired her during a fake “promotion” meeting, according to the suit.
The woman’s lawyer, Bennitta Joseph, told The Post, “She should never have had to be in a situation where she would ever have to choose between her livelihood and having to tolerate any type of sexual advances in the workplace.’’
The plaintiff added in her suit that even after she was fired, the terrorizing didn’t stop there.
Gowl hired a retired FBI agent to stalk her social circle, her lawsuit claimed.
The former agent “flashed” his retired agent badge and spread rumors that she was a “scammer,” leading her only family in the US to cut her off, according to the lawsuit.
Gowl even allegedly sabotaged a new job offer she had secured, the suit alleged.
The plaintiff said in court papers that she now suffers from chronic PTSD and severe depression.
“I want this to be a cautionary tale,” she told The Post. “To quote one of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors: ‘I’m traumatized, but I’m not stupid.’ ”
English (US)