A senior manager at Bloomberg LP bombarded a male employee with crude sexual messages \u2014 asking about lubricant and sex acts during a work chat \u2014 while the media giant looked the other way, according to a bombshell lawsuit obtained by The Post.<\/p>\n
Charles Kyle O\u2019Rourke, an account manager who has worked at Bloomberg since 2019, accused a senior manager of turning the company\u2019s own internal messaging system into a vehicle for sexual harassment \u2014 and blaming Bloomberg itself for letting it happen.<\/p>\n
The suit, filed against the financial data giant earlier this week in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, names Peter Elliot as the alleged harasser.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A Bloomberg L.P. account manager, Charles Kyle O\u2019Rourke, filed a lawsuit April 13 in Manhattan Supreme Court alleging a senior manager, Peter Elliot (pictured above), sent him sexually explicit messages on Bloomberg\u2019s internal chat system in February 2025. Gustavo Caballero<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the course of his nearly six-year tenure, Mr. O\u2019Rourke has been subjected to repeated acts of sexual harassment by a senior manager, Peter Elliot, and has experienced a hostile work environment exacerbated by inadequate management support and failure to provide reasonable accommodations for his deteriorating mental health,\u201d the complaint alleges.<\/p>\n
In February 2025, according to the complaint, Elliot fired off a harassing message to O\u2019Rourke as the account manager was making plans for international travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour life is terrible. Let\u2019s hope there\u2019s a Thai out there who can soothe you. Do you take the whole tribe? Or do you just pack some lube and some Nasty Pig cutoffs and get on the plane?\u201d Elliot allegedly wrote.<\/p>\n
Elliot also allegedly told O\u2019Rourke he should \u201cspit in [his] coffee\u201d and that \u201cteeth marks may have to wait\u201d \u2014 crude innuendo the suit claims was entirely unwelcome.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Rourke allegedly reported Elliot\u2019s conduct to upper-level management and executives. Bloomberg did nothing, the complaint alleges, and the harassment continued.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Rourke reported the harassment to management, but Bloomberg allegedly took no action, according to the complaint. Askar \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
When O\u2019Rourke told his manager, David LaPaglia, that his ADHD symptoms and anxiety had worsened and asked to discuss possible accommodations, LaPaglia retaliated with a systematic campaign to push O\u2019Rourke out, the suit alleges.<\/p>\n
LaPaglia subjected him to relentless micromanagement, demanded hourly task updates, stripped clients from his portfolio and then told those same clients that O\u2019Rourke was no longer at the firm, the suit claims.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Rourke took a medical leave of absence on Aug. 19 following what the suit called a \u201ctransparent attempt to force Plaintiff to resign from the firm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elliot at an Oct. 16, 2015 event at Bloomberg in New York City. Gustavo Caballero<\/p>\n
The complaint, filed April 13 by attorneys Reyna Lubin and Andrew Clark of Eisenberg & Baum, LLP, brings six claims against Bloomberg under New York State and City Human Rights Law: hostile work environment, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, retaliation, aiding and abetting, and whistleblower retaliation under New York Labor Law.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg is \u201cstrictly liable\u201d for its managers\u2019 conduct, the suit argues, because they exercised supervisory responsibility over O\u2019Rourke. By refusing to discipline Elliot or LaPaglia, the company didn\u2019t just fail to stop the abuse \u2014 it allegedly condoned it.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Rourke is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, attorneys\u2019 fees, and a court order forcing Bloomberg to overhaul its harassment reporting and training policies. A jury trial is demanded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have looked into his claim and are confident it has no merit,\u201d Ty Trippet, a spokesman for Bloomberg LP told The Post in a statement.<\/p>\n
Neither Elliot nor O\u2019Rourke could be reached for comment.\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior manager at Bloomberg LP bombarded a male employee with crude sexual messages \u2014 asking about lubricant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[27337,79182,288,2803,16471,68,22958,3100,2850,75,84,83,4327,1208,9,24,63,30277,3644],"class_list":{"0":"post-198814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-bloomberg","9":"tag-bloomberg-lp","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-court","12":"tag-discrimination","13":"tag-exclusive","14":"tag-harassment","15":"tag-lawsuit","16":"tag-lawsuits","17":"tag-manhattan","18":"tag-manhattan-headlines","19":"tag-manhattan-news","20":"tag-manhattan-supreme-court","21":"tag-media","22":"tag-new-york","23":"tag-new-york-city","24":"tag-nyc","25":"tag-sexual-discrimination","26":"tag-sexual-harassment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}