Park Ridge board member Tom Sotos and a sexual harassment suit.

At the Park Ridge board meeting last night, board member Athos Tom Sotos interrupted a parent during the public comment section of the meeting.

Reports the Daily Herald:

Perhaps the most dramatic moment during the almost hourlong public comment came when board member Athan Sotos interrupted district parent Daisy Bowe because she, like several other speakers, used the word “vagina” in her remarks. Sotos said he denounced Paterno’s use of the word and he didn’t want to have to explain to his children why people at the board meeting also used the word.

Superintendent Laurie Heinz had to remind Sotos that the public comment section of board meetings was not intended as a dialogue or back and forth. It was a time for the community to address board members.

I still ask why the sexist and racist tweets of Dr. Dathan Paterno went unchallenged for four years by literally fellow board members until this week.

The Park Ridge board is all male except for one female.

One of the guys is Tom Sotos, who was offended by parents using the word vagina in their complaints about the Paterno tweets.

Sotos is an owner of a Twisted Kilt franchise in downtown Chicago.

I’m not a customer, but I’m told it is a Hooters clone.

From Huffington Post:

Nineteen employees at the Celtic-themed “breastaurant” Tilted Kilt’s Chicago Loop location on Wednesday filed a lawsuit claiming that the eatery’s bar manager sexually harassed them.The lawsuit [PDF] contains disturbing details of incidents that allegedly occurred between the manager, the location’s owners and their scantily-clad staff at the restaurant, located at 17 N. Wabash Ave.

Mark Roth, an attorney representing the women, accused the location’s former manager, whom he described as a “predator,” of making numerous disturbing comments to his clients, CBS Chicago reports.

“There were requests for sex,” Roth told CBS. “There were degrading comments that were made. Something that no woman should have to put up with anywhere, let alone by their manager in the workforce.”

As the Chicago Tribune reports, the women in June filed a sexual harassment complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The women claim they had to work in a “sexually hostile, offensive, humiliating and degrading” environment, where, among the 30 incidents outlined in the lawsuit, the location’s manager and owners made comments such as “Meow, meow, you’re a dirty kitty” and “You don’t know what I’d like to do to you” to the employees. Women who spoke out against these remarks allegedly were given less busy shifts, the Tribune reports.

According to Fox Chicago, management also grabbed employees’ breasts, licked employees’ ears and attempted to kiss the women.

Maybe that is what explains Sotos’ silence these past years of Paterno tweets.

But it doesn’t explain his being offended by the word vagina in the meeting last night. He has surely heard it before at the joint he owns.

Or worse.