A California woman who worked as a personal assistant to former NBA star Chris Bosh is suing the Basketball Hall of Famer and his wife, claiming the two created a work environment so toxic, she now regularly suffers “debilitating panic attacks.”

For starters, Olga Kirpicheva, 34, says her interactions with Bosh’s wife, Adrienne, consisted largely of “yelling,” “screaming,” and “offensive language,” according to a wide-ranging employment discrimination lawsuit obtained by The Independent.

Kirpicheva’s complaint also accuses Bosh himself of failing to prevent a relative on the 11-time All Star’s payroll from continually propositioning her, telling her, among other things, that he was “horny” and “needed to get laid,” while grinding his crotch up against her.

Worse yet, Kirpicheva accuses the 41-year-old Bosh of purposefully looking the other way after a coach at his Indiana basketball camp allegedly talked his way into her hotel room and sexually assaulted her.

“Defendant Christopher Bosh and the basketball camp coach who assaulted Plaintiff are close friends,” according to Kirpicheva’s complaint, which does not identify the alleged attacker by name.

Things eventually got bad enough that Kirpicheva – who moved to the U.S. from Russia in 2009 to play tennis for Fresno State University – had to quit in an attempt to mitigate the “mental, emotional, and physical toll and harm she had suffered,” her complaint contends.

It says the Boshes then locked Kirpicheva out of an apartment they had provided her, ultimately forcing her to get a court order to retrieve her passport, work permit, Social Security card and other belongings.

Attorney Matthew Haulk, who is representing Kirpicheva, told The Independent that the case is still in its early stages, which limits his ability to discuss it in detail. However, Haulk said, “It is clear is that, like so many other young women working for powerful people, Olga Kirpicheva was placed in an impossible situation. She was expected to work tirelessly without complaint, accept intolerable working conditions in silence, and allow her bosses to control her life. This lawsuit reflects Ms. Kirpicheva’s decision to stand up for herself and take her life back.”

Kirpicheva’s suit names Chris and Adrienne Bosh as defendants, in addition to Bosh Enterprises, their LLC, and up to 50 “John Does” to be named later. The attorneys representing the Boshes in the lawsuit did not respond to The Independent’s requests for comment; messages sent to Chris and Adrienne Bosh’s personal email addresses went unanswered.

In a September 11 response to Kirpicheva’s complaint filed by the Boshes, the two denied each of the allegations, claiming, variously, that she had consented to the acts she later described as sexual harassment and assault, that she engaged in “employment-related misconduct” and “fraud,” that she “abandoned” her passport and the other items at the Austin apartment, and that any failure to properly compensate her was not purposeful.

Following a standout college career at Georgia Tech, the Toronto Raptors selected Bosh in the first round of the 2003 NBA Draft. Over the course of seven seasons in Toronto, Bosh, who won a gold medal as part of the U.S men’s basketball team at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, would become the Raptors’ all-time leader in rebounds, rebounds per game and blocked shots. In 2010, the Miami Heat made a deal with Toronto to acquire Bosh, who in 2012 and 2013 helped lead Miami to two NBA championship titles. Bosh reluctantly retired in 2019 due to a life-threatening blood clotting condition.

Adrienne Bosh is a “Dreamweaver,” “Wife” and “Mama of 5!” according to her Facebook profile, as well as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, boutique owner and social media personality. She and Chris met in 2009 at a charity event, were married in 2011, and have five children together.

“I approach them with empowering, affirming language,” Adrienne told an interviewer in 2019 of her parenting technique. “It’s extremely important to me that they embrace self-love and self-acceptance. Above all things, I want to raise my children to have strong self-esteem, empathy, and compassion for both themselves and others.”

Kirpicheva first went to work for the Boshes in 2017, hiring on as their personal assistant and house manager, according to Kirpicheva’s complaint, which was filed last month in California state court and removed to Los Angeles federal court on September 11.

Her duties included looking after the Boshes’ children, cleaning, booking travel, packing and unpacking for the family, scheduling appointments, paying bills, assisting with home remodeling and repairs, handling correspondence, scheduling events, and planning parties, according to Kirpicheva’s complaint, which describes her work schedule as “grueling.”

“Throughout her employment, [Kirpicheva] regularly worked more than 40 hours a week without meal periods or rest periods, as [mandated] by California law,” the complaint states.

At the same time, the Bosh family “maintained a cosmopolitan lifestyle and regularly traveled between their luxury homes in different states,” the complaint asserts. Kirpricheva would travel with the couple and their kids, between the family’s opulent multimillion-dollar spreads in Los Angeles, Miami, and Austin, Texas, enduring “outrageous and abusive” treatment all the while, according to the complaint.

“Mrs. Bosh knew the effect of her abusive behavior” toward Kirpicheva, but “failed to correct or otherwise relent from her hostile conduct,” the complaint continues.

Starting in 2021, Kirpicheva says a Bosh family employee – who was also related to the Boshes – began to make “unwanted advances” towards her. According to the complaint, this included “commenting on her physical appearance, asking her to dates, inviting her to drinks, telling her that he was ‘horny’ and telling her that he needed to ‘get laid.’”

Kirpicheva made no secret of the fact that she was not interested, but the unnamed employee/relative ignored her rejections, the complaint goes on. It says he “regularly approached [Kirpicheva] while she was working and physically embraced her, pressing his groin against her body, and holding her in this position for 20 to 30 seconds,” and claims Chris and Adrienne Bosh were fully aware of the situation but that both “failed to take immediate and appropriate corrective action.”

When Kirpicheva told Adrienne Bosh about what was going on, she “laughed,” according to the complaint.

In August 2022, while on a trip with Bosh to his basketball camp in Indiana, one of the coaches there knocked on Kirpicheva’s hotel room door at 1:45 a.m. “under the pretext of returning rental car keys,” the complaint continues. When she opened the door, the coach, who is not identified by name in court filings, “pressed his way in and gained unauthorized access to the room,” forcing himself on Kirpicheva, according to the complaint.

It says she “struggled, pushed him off, and shouted,” after which the coach backed off and “fled from the hotel room.”

The wife of a close friend of Bosh’s encouraged Kirpicheva to tell him what had happened, and she “repeatedly attempted” to do so, but Bosh “appeared to do everything in his power to prevent [her] from reporting the assault to him so that he could maintain the pretext of ignorance,” the complaint alleges.

“For example, [Kirpicheva] asked Mr. Bosh whether they could speak while they traveled back to their Indiana hotel, Mr. Bosh refused,” the complaint states. “When they were leaving the hotel, [Kirpicheva] asked if they could talk. Mr. Bosh refused. [Kirpicheva] suggested that they would talk the following Monday. Mr. Bosh stated: ‘There’s not going to be a Monday for me.’”

Kirpicheva and Bosh flew back together from Indiana to Los Angeles, then drove from the airport to the family’s home in Pacific Palisades, according to the complaint.

“Mr. Bosh made himself unavailable throughout the car ride and was on his phone the entire car ride,” it says. “Mr. Bosh had never treated [Kirpicheva] in this manner and [she] realized that the working conditions (which included sexual harassment, gender harassment, and sexual battery) had become intolerable and that, for her mental health and physical well-being, she was compelled to resign. [Kirpicheva] entered the Bosh’s Los Angeles home, put down her personal belongings, and left the premises.”

Kirpicheva told the Boshes that she would promptly retrieve her property from a rental apartment in Austin the family provided for her when they were at their Texas home.

“In response,” the complaint alleges, “Defendant Adrienne Bosh changed the locks.”

It took Kirpicheva three weeks to gain access to the apartment, requiring her to go to court for a writ of reentry, according to the complaint. However, the complaint alleges the Boshes “refused to return” Kirpicheva’s personal documents until May 14, 2024 – during which time her identity was stolen, apparently resulting in at least two dozen fraudulent loan and credit applications and an attempt to cash a bogus federal tax refund check in her name.

On top of it all, Kirpicheva claims Bosh and his wife cheated her out of overtime pay and denied her proper meal breaks throughout. (In 2019, Bosh was sued by his onetime chauffeur for allegedly refusing to pay him overtime.)

Kirpicheva is now seeking compensatory, general, statutory, punitive, exemplary and special damages in an amount to be determined by a jury, as well as attorneys’ fees and court costs.

She did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chris-bosh-nba-miami-heat-lawsuit-b2827543.html