
By Tiffany Williams –
On Monday the Justice Department announced that it has filed a lawsuit alleging that a property manager in Chicopee, Salazar dos Santos violated the Fair Housing Act by subjecting female tenants to sexual harassment.
The Justice Department says that dos Santos has subjected female tenants to sexual harassment on multiple occasions since at least 2008, including unwelcome sexual contact, coercing them to perform oral sex and touching intimate parts of their bodies.
In their complaint, the Justice Department also alleges that dos Santos exposed his genitals to female tenants, locked tenants in his office, implicitly offered to grant tangible benefits, such as rent payment plans, in exchange for engaging in sexual acts with him, and threatened tenants who resisted or objected to his unwelcome sexual harassment.
The owners of the properties, two family trusts, are alleged to be liable for Salazar dos Santos’s conduct.