Friday, Nov. 2, 2007

American sues Dentsu USA over brothel outing

NEW YORK (AP) The former creative director of the U.S. arm of the Dentsu advertising agency sued the firm Thursday, saying he was pressured to visit a brothel and engage in other sexually explicit activities on company outings and then was fired after he complained about it.

In a lawsuit seeking unspecified damages filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Steve Biegel said he and other company employees were put in awkward, sexually charged situations by Toyo Shigeta, chief executive officer of Dentsu Holdings USA.

Steve Ellwanger, a spokesman for the company, said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not immediately comment.

Biegel said in the suit he was the executive responsible for developing television, radio, print and outdoor advertisements for many of Dentsu's most important clients when he was asked to go on a trip in June 2004 to the Czech Republic, where a commercial was shot for Canon Inc.

One evening during the trip, Shigeta ordered Biegel and another employee of the company to go on an outing with him but refused to say where they were going, the lawsuit said.

Shigeta took them to a brothel, leaving Biegel, who is married, offended and humiliated that he had been forced or duped into going there, the lawsuit said.

It said Shigeta later demanded they have sex with prostitutes and became angry when they did not, accusing them of being "no fun."

The lawsuit said Shigeta later told them that having sex with prostitutes was a proper style of conducting business and commemorating business dealings.

According to the lawsuit, Biegel was "horrified, offended and humiliated by this sexually debasing experience of being forced to attend a brothel imposed on him as a condition of his employment."

On another business trip to Brazil in April 2004, Biegel, who was fired last November, witnessed Shigeta repeatedly taking photographs emphasizing the crotches of scantily clad women on the beach until a male companion of one of the women on the beach threatened him, the lawsuit said.

Shigeta demonstrated a similar obsession during a photo shoot for an advertisement for Canon in Key Biscayne, Fla., when he took a picture of tennis star Maria Sharapova on the tennis court and proudly distributed the "crotch shot," the lawsuit said.

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