Stamford cleaning lady files suit against alleged masturbater’s security company
STAMFORD CT July 14 2019 Earlier this year, a cleaning woman for a Stamford Housing Authority building accused a security guard of masturbating in front of her as she performed her duties.
Now she is suing the security company that hired him and is seeking over $15,000 in civil court.
The June lawsuit comes after cleaning woman, Sandra Pineda, 47, secretly filmed security guard Rony Pierre-Louis masturbating while she cleaned around him at Post House, 40 Clinton Ave., and went to police in March with the film.
The suit is filed against Century Protective Services of White Plains, New York, the company that hired Pierre-Louis in 2017.
Pierre-Louis, 55 of Seaton Road, was charged by Stamford police in early April with two counts of public indecency and breach of peace. He was released after posting a $25,000 court-appearance bond. The case is still pending at the Stamford courthouse.
For several months, according to the suit filed by New Haven attorney Steven Jacobs, Pineda would regularly enter the waiting room of Post House to find the blinds closed and Pierre-Louis seated in a chair in a corner of of the room. She said he would stare at her as she worked while rubbing his crotch.
Pineda endured Pierre-Louis’ masturbatory behavior while she cleaned until she came up with the idea of exposing him by filming him on her cellphone, the suit said.
“It is really a shame what this lady had to go through and being an entry-level employee, she was caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of reporting this behavior. At least she was savvy enough to put the camera on her cleaning cart with a couple cleaning bottles in front of her phone and caught this man in the act,” Jacobs said.
As a result, Pineda suffered severe emotional trauma, resulting in a limited ability to carry on with her activities, the suit said.
The account Jacobs outlines in the suit closely resembles what Pineda told police when she turned in the video footage, according to Pierre-Louis’s five-page arrest affidavit.
What police discovered after Pineda came forward was that Pierre-Louis was a suspect in two other incidents reported to Stamford police.
He came under suspicion in April 2005 when he approached a woman and her 6-year-old daughter with a written note after he had watched them from inside his car near the volleyball court at Cove Island Park. The woman told police the note said, “You both made me come,” the affidavit said. However, no charges were filed, police said.
In May 2015 he was arrested for allegedly masturbating in front of a woman at Cummings Beach and was charged with public indecency. In that incident, the woman was able to get pictures of Pierre-Louis exposing himself to her while in his car with the door open.
The suit faults Century Protective Services for not conducting a proper or through background check on Pierre-Louis.
“It is just outrageous that a security company of all companies would not have been able to discover that this guy has previously engaged in the same sort of conduct in the past,” Jacobs said. “A simple Google search would have revealed all that information.”
While the suit claims that Pineda has suffered more than $15,000 in damages, Jacobs said he could not say what the final request for the Honduran immigrant will be.
“We are going to ask for fair compensation and it remains to be seen what that amount will be. She is still getting therapy,” Jacobs said.
Stamford attorney Craig Bonnist, who is representing the security company, did not immediately return a call for comment.
But in an answer to the lawsuit filed in court, Bonnest said the complaint was so vague and ambiguous that it fails to provide the defendant with any specific basis for the legal claims alleged against Century Protective Services and the company exercised due diligence and reasonable care in hiring Pierre-Louis.
stamfordadvocate.com
