Attorneys defending a 67 year-old Westchester cookbook author from federal human trafficking violations and sexual abuse charges are attempting to suppress information that he had a legal, consensual encounter with a 16 year-old girl in Michigan in 2008. (At the time, the age of consent in that state was 16.) The Post reports that the lawyers told the judge "the questionable ethical and moral choice of an older man sleeping with a very young female would "lead many jurors to hate [Joseph] Yannai," and after stressing that his behavior was "not criminal," it "would certainly be viewed as abhorrent by a large portion of society."
Yannai, who looks like a cross between the Crypt Keeper and Ernest Hemingway, allegedly fondled the "breasts and buttocks" of the 18-22-year-old au pairs he hired from Europe from 2003 through 2009.
The author of the must-have work The International Who's Who of Chefs 2004-2005, lives in an "$800,000 Pound Ridge home that he shares with his wife," and hired the au pairs as "editorial assistants for Yannai's cookbook writing activities and to assist the couple with household chores." In addition to forbidding the au pairs to wear bras, "he had them watch him take a bath." Clearly this is how Yannai awakens his muse. Prosecutors have probably never read Julia Child's classic Cooking With My Hand On Your Ass And You'll Like It.
