Celebrity Chef Mario Batali Goes To Trial Over Woman's #MeToo-era Groping Claim

Celebrity chef Mario Batali went on trial on Monday over allegations that he forcibly groped and kissed a fan in the only criminal case to result from multiple #MeToo-era claims of sexual harassment and assault that helped fuel his downfall.

Dueling narratives emerged during opening statements in Boston Municipal Court. Assistant District Attorney Nina Bonelli said Batali drunkenly assaulted the woman, Natali Tene, in 2017 while posing with her for "selfie" photographs at a bar near Boston's Eataly, the Italian market and restaurant he at the time part owned.

"She wanted to get a celebrity picture with a celebrity chef, the defendant," Bonelli said in her opening statement. "Instead of just selfies, the defendant began groping Ms. Tene's body."

Anthony Fuller, the lawyer representing Batali in the non-jury trial on a 2019 charge of indecent assault and battery, said during his opening statement: "The defense in this case is very simple: This didn't happen."

Bonelli said Tene eventually came forward after a "barrage" of media reports concerning allegations by other women about sexually aggressive behavior by Batali, starting with a report in the food website Eater.com.

"When that media story first ran in December 2017, Ms. Tene realized it wasn't an isolated incident," Bonelli said.

Fuller, Batali's lawyer, said Tene's own photos and videos from that night showed that no assault occurred and argued that "self-serving, biased testimony" was simply to support a civil lawsuit she filed in hopes of a monetary settlement.

Fuller said her credibility was undercut by her text messages with a friend joking about the incident. When filling out a questionnaire for jury duty in an unrelated assault case, rather than say she was a crime victim to get out of jury duty, she falsely claimed to be clairvoyant, Fuller said.

If convicted, Batali faces up to 2-1/2 years in jail and having to register as a sex offender. While the case had been set for a jury trial, Batali waived his right to one and elected to have Judge James Stanton decide his guilt or innocence himself.

The case is one of a handful of criminal prosecutions of celebrities following the explosion of the #MeToo movement in 2017, which exposed widespread patterns of sexual harassment or abuse of women in multiple spheres of American life.

Prosecutors said Tene came forward with her account after Eater.com detailed allegations by four women who said Batali touched them inappropriately over at least two decades.

The Eater.com report and others prompted Batali's firing from the ABC cooking and talk show "The Chew," and Batali later cut ties with restaurants like New York's Babbo and Del Posto he partly owned. He denied allegations of sexual assault but apologized for "deeply inappropriate" behavior.

Batali and his business partner in July agreed to pay $600,000 to at least 20 former employees to resolve claims by New York's attorney general that their Manhattan restaurants were rife with sexual harassment.