The state’s high court docket suspended a probate decide with out pay for grabbing and pinching the left butt cheek of a court docket worker at a resort bar whereas staying there on the taxpayer dime.
“OMG. I feel one of many judges grabbed my butt on objective,” the sufferer texted her sister after the April 25, 2019 incident, in accordance with the ruling. “He’s additionally carrying a hip flask, so possibly simply fell? Besides it was a definite pinch.”
The ruling provides the sufferer texted: “(A)t the bar after dinner one of many newer judges full palmed my (expletive). Kinda thought possibly it was a mistake till at this time he spent the day hovering uncomfortably round me.”
On Wednesday, the state Supreme Judicial Courtroom discovered Choose Paul Sushchyk — who was appointed to the state Probate and Household Courtroom in 2018 — to have “engaged in an intentional, nonconsensual, and unwelcome touching of a trial court docket worker” and lied to the court docket about it.
The SJC suspended Sushchyk efficient April 23 and advisable he keep that method lengthy sufficient for the state to find out whether or not he ought to maintain his job. It additional advisable that he be censured publicly and pay the prices of the investigation. Sushchyk makes a base wage of $184,693 per 12 months, in accordance with Herald payroll information.
“I wouldn’t do one thing like that,” he instructed the Probate and Household Courtroom Chief Justice John Casey when confronted with the allegation. “I might by no means damage anybody, particularly a lady.”
Judges and a few workers of the court docket, together with the sufferer, had been required to attend a convention at Ocean Edge Resort and Golf Membership in Brewster as considered one of their two yearly court docket conferences, Casey wrote in an investigation abstract. That two-day occasion included a resort keep at state expense — that resort’s reserving web site reveals rooms beginning at $144 for one bed room an evening as much as $1,265 an evening for a three-bedroom villa.
Convention work ended at round 3 p.m. that first day, April 25, 2019. The lady went to Bayzo’s Pub within the resort’s basement following the 7 p.m. convention dinner to have a drink and chat with three different ladies on the convention.
At round 9 p.m., Sushchyk approached the high-top desk to speak with one of many different ladies sitting there, who he knew from his days as a training legal professional.
He was “unsteady” on his toes, he wrote in his Could 20, 2019 formal response to the allegations, when returning to the desk from the toilet because of journey, overindulgence in dinner and whiskey — he stated he’d had one drink, however the sufferer stated he took a pull from a silver flask proper after the grope.
“I recall that as I started to move by (the sufferer), to regular myself, I positioned my hand within the path of her chair and got here into momentary contact with a portion of her decrease physique,” he wrote.