Celebrity chef Mario Batali settles lawsuits from two women who accused him of sexual assault

Batali was acquitted of sexual assault in a criminal trial earlier this year

Mario Batali has settled lawsuits filed by two separate women who claimed the celebrity chef sexually assaulted them in Boston.

Lawyers for Natali Tene and Alexandra Brown confirmed the settlements on Tuesday, announcing in a statement that “the matters have been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties”. The lawyers declined to comment further, citing confidentiality concerns.

Ms Tene’s allegations were at the heart of the criminal case prosecutors pursued against Mr Batali that ended with his acquittal on charges of indecent assault and battery in May. Ms Tene claimed that Mr Batali forcibly kissed and groped her in a Boston bar in 2017, but the judge in the case ruled that while Mr Batali “did not cover himself in glory on the night in question”, he was concerned about Ms Tene’s credibility.

Ms Tene was far from the only person to accuse Mr Batali of inappropriete behaviour at the height of the Me Too movement. In the winter of 2017, nine women — a number of whom worked for Mr Batali — came forward to accuse the chef of sexual misconduct including groping and harrassment.

In May of 2018, the CBS television programme 60 Minutes reported new allegations against Mr Batali as various muncipalities opened criminal investigations into his behaviour. Mr Batali stepped away from his restaurant empire following the allegations, left his ABC cooking show The Chow and apologised for his conduct.

“I have made many mistakes and I am so very sorry that I have disappointed my friends, my family, my fans and my team,” Mr Batali wrote in an email newsletter after the first allegations were publicised. “My behavior was wrong and there are no excuses. I take full responsibility.”

It was a swift fall from grace for a longtime television star who got his break in entertainment with the Food Network programme Molto Mario that launched in the mid-1990s.

“Any admiration I have expressed in the past for Mario Batali and Ken Friedman [another restaurateur who faced misconduct allegations], whatever I might feel about them, however much I admired and respected them, is, in light of these charges, irrelevant,” fellow chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain wrote in an essay in light of the allegations in December 2017.

The allegations against Mr Batali came as part of a much broader reckoning in the restaurant industry and society as a whole about the prevelance of sexual misconduct and male behaviour in light of reporting about the conduct of disgraced former film producer Harvey Weinstein.