Troubled Waters At the Salon Spa

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Behind the perfumed scenes, controversy and confrontations have followed Chreky.

When he worked at his sister's salon, Piaf, in 1996, he allegedly tried to attack a female co-worker on the sidewalk in front of the salon, leading to his arrest and a night in jail. The charges were dropped the next day.

When he left the salon in 1997, he sued his sister over how to divide the business, according to court records. He sued his brother's children the same year in an attempt to bar them from opening a salon using the family name in Montgomery County, family members say. His sister, Lisette Attias, declined to comment, as did David Chreky, one of his nephews who was a defendant in the suit. (This reporter has been a client of Attias for five years but first learned of her relationship to Chreky during the reporting of this story.)

Despite the salon's success, the D.C. Department of Employment Services found in 2003 that Andre and Serena Chreky had failed to pay their employees overtime. An audit by the department found "several violations" in a 20-month period during 1999 and 2000. The city ordered the Chrekys to pay a total of $26,205 to 47 of their 59 employees and he did.

Andre Chreky was in court in Virginia in 2005, after a former girlfriend, Adele Doudaklian, said he fathered her child in 1986. She testified that she and Chreky had an extramarital affair for nearly 20 years, while each was married to other people. Her husband filed for divorce and a DNA test established that he was not the child's father.

Doudaklian then filed for child support from Chreky, and a DNA test identified him as the father with "99.99 percent certainty." The Virginia Department of Social Services' Division of Child Support Enforcement ordered Chreky to pay child support. Chreky did but appealed the paternity decision, denying he was the father. After losing two initial rounds, Chreky wound up in District Court, where a judge dismissed the results of the lab test as flawed, and said Doudaklian's testimony was "very problematic."

Barrett and Thong had both worked for Chreky for years, they say, and had a friendly relationship with him before he began approaching them for sex around 2003. Thong lists seven physical encounters during a two-year period. Barrett said in her lawsuit that Chreky's retaliation against her was so severe that when she was pregnant, he refused to let her sit while working, nearly resulting in the loss of her baby.

"Mr. Chreky often became upset with Ms. Barrett and Ms. Thong, and when he did, he came to the receptionist desk and instructed us to block off their books or move their clients to other stylists," says a statement from Julia Taylor-Brown, one of several former receptionists who say Chreky routinely took out his anger on stylists by taking clients away from them. (Sullivan says that current receptionists have given statements that Chreky doesn't "block the books" of stylists.)

According to the current suits, Chreky was prone to vein-popping tirades, verbal and physical abuse while docking pay and taking tips intended for employees.

Barrett and Thong both say they stayed at the salon because of financial necessity. A no-compete clause in their contracts barred them from working within a five-mile radius for six months after their departure -- which would have left them with almost no clients and no income, they say.

The statements gathered by the plaintiffs include two from former co-workers, both of whom say that they have known Chreky more than a decade and that they counseled him to stop acting inappropriately with employees.