After graduating from high school in Des Moines, Ms. Gatkuoth moved to New York City, convinced that it would be easier for an African immigrant like her to find a job and to fit in here than in Iowa. She got occasional work as a model, and offers from several restaurants, including Tavern on the Green, in Central Park at West 67th Street, to work as a hostess.

To customers, Tavern on the Green epitomizes gaiety. With its lemondrop limoncello martinis, its vases overflowing with roses and amaryllis, and its two dozen copper and gold-leaf weather vanes, it pushes an often zany festiveness to the max. The Veuve Clicquot flows, the candles flicker, the chandeliers sparkle and the moonlight shines through the glass roof. It boasts a gaudy romanticism.

Ms. Gatkuoth said that she enjoyed her work, and that the trouble began slowly, with a few comments, but then became a torrent of vulgar remarks and touching. “I was asked to perform sexual favors in great detail by this manager,” she said. “And when I refused, I was told that I was not going to get the schedule I wanted. It resulted in my paycheck being cut.”

Ms. Gatkuoth said that when female employees passed through the kitchen to get to their lockers, they often faced a torrent of bawdy commentary from the kitchen crew.

“Sometimes they would say: ‘When are you going to get pregnant? That’s all women are good for,’ ” she said. “Sometimes there’d be a big group of people, and the manager would make a comment about your private parts and get a laugh out of everybody.”

“Most of the time it was in private; I’d be by myself,” she said. “He’d just come and grab my butt and slap it. It’s a big place and there’s a lot of places where things go on that most of the customers don’t go to.”

Image Martha Gatkuoth was the lead complainant in the federal lawsuit against her employer. Credit... WABC

“He’d make statements like, ‘Why do you think so and so gets this schedule?’ I’d wonder whether they were threatened the same way I was threatened.”