Wynn With an Encore
By Josh Resnek
The persistent taint and corporate culture of sexual harassment at Wynn Resorts intensified last week with a former Encore employee suing the company.
The Wynn Resorts sexual harassment mess has spread into Everett.
Mary Jane Brackett-Kelly, alleges she was subjected to months of unwelcome sexual conduct by a man for whom she worked in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed last week in Middlesex Superior Court.
This is yet another stain on Wynn’s Resorts reputation, which was believed to be stellar when the Massachusetts Gaming Commission determined the company was suitable to hold a gaming license following an intensive background investigation.
The Gaming Commission is right now putting together an investigative report aimed at determining whether or not Wynn Resorts is suitable to hold a gaming license.
These new sexual harassment charges coming on the heels of the fantastic charges of sexual harassment heaped upon Steve Wynn, led him to resign and to sell all his stock in the company he founded.
Dozens of women interviewed by the Wall Street Journal late last year revealed Wynn, and his company as serial sexual harassers and enablers respectively.
The company believed it had turned a corner when Wynn resigned and new directors, three women were appointed.
Further, a stockholders meeting last month led to the removal of Wynn loyalists on the Board of Directors while at the same time enhancing Elaine Wynn’s influence and vision as the largest stockholder in the company.
Now this sexual harassment lawsuit.
Brackett-Kelly says Dillon, her superior and the company’s information chief for the Everett project, made lewd and suggestive comments, stared and leered at her, and rubbed her shoulders inappropriately until she told him angrily to stop.
Her lawsuit names five Wynn executives as defendants.
She asserts in the lawsuit that Dillon’s unwelcome sexual conduct has the purpose and effect of creating a hostile, humiliating, and offensive work environment for Brackett-Kelly.
The harassment took place, according to Brackett-Kelly, in 2016-2017.
She resigned from the company in February.
Last Thursday, Wynn officials raised questions about Brackett-Kelly’s intentions – about the suit’s timing and motivation.
“A complaint of inappropriate joking and behavior in the workplace was filed by an employee more than a year ago, resulting in a thorough internal investigation and review by an independent law firm,” said Greg John, spokesman for Encore Boston Harbor.
But what John described as “inappropriate joking” struck Brackett-Kelly far differently, the suit states, as reported in the Boston Globe.