Inwood Woman Files Sexual Harassment Complaint Against Long Beach Doctor

Three woman, including one from Inwood, have filed a sexual harassment complaint against a Long Beach doctor, alleging that he fired them after they had endured ongoing sexual-related misbehavior that includes everything from inappropriate touching to exposing himself to allowing patients to have sex at his West End office.

Shivon Super, 31, of Long Beach, Samantha Romanger, 21, of Inwood, and Lauren Schlanger, 21, of Far Rockaway, filed a civil rights complaint on Dec. 17 with the New York State Division of Human Rights, alleging gender discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation against Kleiner, 51, an orthopedist who owns Beach and Surf Medical.

At a press conference on Monday at the law firm Leeds, Morelli & Brown in Carle Place, all three women said they were fired after an incident in October, when a husband and wife visited the office and Kleiner agreed to artificially inseminate the woman. Schlanger and Romanger said Kleiner instructed the couple to go into the office bathroom and have sex in order to obtain the husband's semen.

"What the doctor ordered was for the husband and wife to go into the bathroom, have sexual relations in the middle of the day, in the middle of his office, with patients in the waiting room and the girls sitting at their desk …. and there was sexual noises and loudness coming from the bathroom," said Scott Cholewa, a legal investigator for the firm.

Schlanger and Romanger said an 18-year-old woman was in the waiting room at the time.

"I was disgusted by it, and I know Lauren was disgusted by it," Romanger said. "We were really shaken up about it."

The former employees said Kleiner instructed Schlanger and Romanger  — who were administrative workers with no medical training — to be in the exam room while he performed the insemination procedure. When Schlanger and Romanger refused, Kleiner terminated them, they said. Super was fired the next day, as the complaint reads, "when the doctor told her if she did not support him she could no longer work there."

Super was unable to recall Kleiner ever performing fertility work during the three years she worked at his office.

"He wanted a female to be in the room to witness it so that there wouldn't be any malpractice, but who are we to say if it was done properly or not, we don't know," she said.

The women said Kleiner did a lot of detox work with patients, working at the Long Beach Medical Center, and he worked with local fire departments.

Their complaint alleges that Kleiner's sexual harassment started in 2008. During the press conference, they went into graphic details about other outlandish acts, including that he brought a blow-up sex doll to an office party and simulated sex with it and touched a sleeping woman under her skirt at another party.

Romanger said during a block party on her street in July, Kleiner showed up, and her friend, a patient of his, was sleeping on her couch when he was caught touching her.

"We put a pillow down so that he couldn't see anything, she was wearing a dress or skirt, and he reached under and was touching her, and Lauren actually caught him doing it," Romanger said.

The woman also said that Kleiner had routine sexual-related discussions with them and made comments about their sexual body parts and weight. They also talked about incidents that indicated he was stalking them.

"He showed up one night in front of my boyfriend's home when I was out back walking the dog," Romanger said. "I asked what are you doing, and he said 'I was just driving by.'"

When asked why they never took their complaints to police or other authorities sooner, Super said that they put up with it because they all desperately needed the work. "There's no work," Super said. "We all have to pay our bills. We stayed as long as we could until it got unbearable."

"He knew the importance of us having money pretty much, and he used it to his advantage," Schlanger said. 

The women said that it wasn't until after they were all fired that they really started to compare stories about incidents. They said that Kleiner would ask them and patients out on dates, and that he asked Super to marry him. Schlanger said that all three women never had any romantic or sexual relations with their former boss, "Nor did we ever lead him on," she said, noting that his comments and actions were all made matter-of-factly, as if his behavior was normal.

Attorney Len Leeds called it one of the "most outrageous" sexual harassment cases he has handled in his 25 years of practice.

"It's just an unbelievable and bizarre situation," Leeds said.

Leeds said that the three women were asking for unspecified compensatory damages, related in part to emotional distress, and that the Nassau County District Attorney's office is looking into other complaints they have alleged against Kleiner, including insurance fraud.

Several attempts to contact Kleiner at his office were unsuccessful. A voicemail message said that the office was not open on Mondays, and no information was listed about his attorney. Sharon Player, the pubic relations director at Long Beach Medical Center, was unavailable for comment on Monday afternoon.