Chris Williams, former parish councilman and ex-SMILE CEO, is accused of coercing an woman into sex.

Williams also allegedly had a voodoo doll of his victim in his desk, a lawsuit claims.

A former Lafayette City-Parish councilman who led a troubled Acadiana nonprofit agency has been accused of pressuring an employee into having sex in the office and attempting to buy her silence with a promotion and a $10,000 bribe.

The official also allegedly kept a voodoo doll wrapped in one of the woman's socks in his desk, according to a recently filed federal lawsuit and an interview with her attorney.

The lawsuit claims that Chris Williams, the ex-CEO of St. Martin-Iberia-Lafayette Community Action Agency, widely known as SMILE, allegedly began sexually harassing the woman shortly after he was hired in 2017.

Williams demanded sexual acts until the woman relented out of fear for her job, then treated her “as if she was his property," the lawsuit states. Coerced sex occurred at Williams' command at the woman’s home, the SMILE office and in hotels whenever Williams attended professional conferences, the female employee said.

“Several times Mr. Williams tried to create a position specifically for me and began requiring me to work within close proximity to him,” the woman wrote in a discrimination complaint filed with her lawsuit. “Mr. Williams would make the comment to me that if I took care of him, he would take care of me.”

Finally, the employee alleges that SMILE fired her in retaliation after she reported Williams for sexual harassment and took leave due to emotional distress.

Williams, who resigned from SMILE amid an undisclosed investigation last summer, does not have a lawyer listed in court and could not be reached despite multiple calls to his cell phone. SMILE officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Neither Williams nor SMILE have responded to the lawsuit in court yet.

The Daily Advertiser is not identifying the employee who has accused Williams because she is a purported victim of sexual harassment and intimidation.

Victoria Bowers, an attorney who represents the woman, said her client surrendered to Williams' harassment because she felt trapped. SMILE was undergoing layoffs at the time, and the single mother of two could not afford to lose her job. Bowers said Williams knew the woman was vulnerable and “groomed her from the moment he was hired."

“Like a lot of women in this position, she felt pressured because she needed that job so her children could eat,” Bowers said. “And she had no one to report him to – he was the chief executive officer.”

The sex harassment lawsuit, which was filedin the Western District of Louisiana federal court in January but has not been publicly reported until now, sheds new light on turmoil inside SMILE, a taxpayer-funded non-profit organization that administers a range of social services in a large portion of Acadiana. SMILE once had an annual budget of about $20 million — mostly consisting of federal Head Start funding — but it lost this funding due to mishandling of reports of child abuse.

Williams, a councilman in the mid-2000s who previously worked for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, was hired in 2017 to lead SMILE by a tie vote by the agency's board of directors in a hotly contested search for a new CEO.Head start funding was in jeopardy at the time of Williams' hiring, so one of his first acts was to attempt to assure the public that SMILE was on steady ground under new leadership.

“We have nothing to hide,” Williams said shortly after taking the $80,000-per-year job.

But that job didn’t last long. Nine months later, the SMILE Board put Williams on indefinite leave, saying he was the subject of an internal investigation, then Williams resigned about a week later. The Daily Advertiser obtained internal SMILE records revealing that an employee had accused Williams of misconduct, but agency officials would still not detail the allegations against the ousted CEO.

The new lawsuit finally makes those allegations clear. The suit states that the female employee first reported Williams to two SMILE board members in May 2018 — about three weeks before Williams was put on leave.

Within days of this complaint, Williams allegedly contacted the woman to offer her a bribe. Bowers said Williams said he had secured the woman a promotion and offered her $10,000 in cash if she would withdraw her complaint. The woman rejected the payment and never managed to actually start her new job, the lawsuit states, because she went on leave due to “severe emotional distress” and was fired by SMILE about a month later.

Bowers said the firing is a clear illustration of a double standard faced by victims of sexual harassment.

“The board obviously believed her, but look at the difference between how the man and the woman were treated,” Bowers said. “He was the man, so he was allowed to resign.”

After Williams resigned, SMILE employees allegedly found what appeared to be a voodoo doll wrapped in a woman’s sock within his desk, then texted a photo of the doll to the female employee, the lawsuit states. Bowers said her client recalled Williams previously texted her saying he had a voodoo doll of her — ominously saying that the doll “would win” — but she had previously dismissed the message as a joke.

Brett Kelman can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at bmkelman@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.