An ex-employee who accused celebrity chef Mario Batali of sexual assault while unconscious is putting herself in the line of fire, identifying herself publicly for the first time since the alleged traumatic event occurred in 2005, and detailing her harrowing experience.
Eva DeVirgilis, 43, said one minute she was being invited to an intimate dinner with Batali at the since-closed gastro pub the Spotted Pig in 2005.
The next minute, she claims she woke up on the floor of the restaurant’s private dining room.
DeVirgilis remembers the assault and describes it in a new documentary film “Batali: The Fall of a Superstar Chef”, which airs Thursday on Discovery+.
The documentary is released a month after the disgraced chef settled two lawsuits in Boston with two women claiming Batali groped them in public in 2017.
No criminal charges have been pressed against the former co-host of “The Chew” following the New York Police Department investigations into three potential assaults. Batali and his former business partner Joe Bastianich, who in 2019 divested Batali from ownership of the B&B Hospitality restaurant empire, which included the likes of Lupa and Italian food market Eataly among others, agreed to pay out a $600,000 settlement to more than 20 employees who claimed they were sexually harassed at their restaurants.
In the documentary, DeVirgilis, who anonymously told part of her story on a 2018 segment of “60 Minutes”, shared the hospital report from the day after the assault that showed bruised ribs and multiple abrasions with DeVirgilis claiming she may have been drugged.
DeVirgilis, an aspiring actor who was 26 at the time, said, “I was working at Babbo full-time for a year when the assault happened. I managed the restaurant’s reservations during the day and hosted during the evenings. I was so excited and eager to work there and my father was a huge fan of Batali.”
“I was so naive. I knew not to walk across Central Park at night or to be alone in a stairwell. I didn’t know I should be afraid of my millionaire celebrity boss in a public place,” DeVirgilis continued. “The night of June 3, 2005, was just like any other night. Batali would often invite friends and employees to the Spotted Pig after hours where they gathered in the private room. I was actually excited to be invited to the Spotted Pig.”
“I thought I would have a drink or two with the group, get on the subway and go home,” she said.
However, when she arrived, she found Batali alone waiting for her with a limo and a bottle of Prosecco.
“He was married. He was my boss,” she said. “It wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be.”
DeVirgilis continued to detail what happened next, “I remember Batali refilling my wine glass, feeling a bit tipsy, and then trying to call it a night. I told him I had a 10 a.m. shift at his restaurant the next day. Batali told me to forget about work. Then the next thing I remember, is waking up lying on a wooden floor in the restaurant with scratches on my body and what looked like semen on my clothes.”
“I vaguely remember Batali aggressively kissing me and then I threw up at some point,” DeVirgilis recalls. “In retrospect, that was the most chilling moment.”
She said she couldn’t believe he had left her laying there like that and didn’t wait for her to sober up.
DeVirgilis said she went home and to work the next day. When Batali called in and she asked him what happened the night before, he “tersely” told her to transfer him to the kitchen, ignoring anything she had to say.
She then called a rape-crisis hotline and met with a counselor at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was given a rape kit and doses of oral contraceptives and AZT antibiotics, according to a hospital report.
“Patient reports that she is unclear of following through with police report because her boss is a powerful person who can blacklist her from the industry,” the hospital report noted.
that heifer knew that dinner was setup for them to get it on and he 1 was not satisfying’ her with his puppy penis , 2 she had to feel all that extra sweaty fat from him pressing against her , 3 he wanted to play so now his ass have to pay after she saw that gross body of his and heard him sound like a whale in destressed while stroking her from the back and slapping on her ass cheeks