THE day after a Wall St intern scored an $23 million court award against her amorous ex-boss, she had only one word for him: “psychopath”.
Pretty brunette Hanna Bouveng, 25, said married financier Benjamin Wey “used psychological abuse’’ to “control and isolate’’ her.
“He has the behaviour of a psychopath,’’ she said.
“He told a lot of stories about how people screw each other by money and political power.
He said that if you don’t have powerful friends or resources, then you’re screwed and could end up in prison,’’ she added, sitting down for an interview in the Midtown office of her lawyer.
“At that time, you don’t really think. You just act on emotion, and that emotion is that I was scared and he intimidated me.”
Bouveng scored the massive payday after Wey, the 43-year-old chief executive of New York Global Group, smeared her online after their breakup and emailed her father a vicious note when he found another man in her bed.
Bouveng also landed $650,000 in compensatory damages for sexual harassment that ranged from Wey openly panting over her at the office to pressuring her to sleep with him.
The former marketing intern — who testified that Wey turned into a two-minute man during their first sex romp — said her boss would change his mood on a dime, depending on whether she met his demands.
“He manipulated me, and he broke me down in various different ways. It could be the way he was acting in the office, depending on whether I had dinner with him or not,’’ she said.
She claimed that Wey would introduce her to important people to try to show how powerful he was.
“It’s weird when you meet (US congresswoman) Nancy Pelosi or the mayor of New York (Bill de Blasio).
All these different things start to break me down, and I didn’t feel that I was independent or I was strong enough to be the person that I am,” Bouveng said.
“He was trying to slowly peel off my own self-identity and replace it with his ego.”
Bouveng said she was especially upset after Wey showed up in her small Swedish hometown of Vetlanda and allegedly frightened her 19-year-old cousin by walking right up to her and calling out her name.
“She was terrified. She just went straight home,’’ she said.
“I realised he was obsessed and he was not going to go away,” Bouveng added, explaining why she finally filed her $850 million suit against Wey.
She said she plans to use at least some of her jury award to help other victims of workplace harassment.
But her own nightmare isn’t over, she said.
Bouveng refused to discuss her personal life, including where she’s living and what she’s doing back home in Sweden, because she said she was still too scared of the international businessman.
“I don’t walk by myself anywhere,’’ she said, adding that she’s scared no matter “what I’m going to do, if I’m going to go around the corner, if I see someone pass by in the type of car he had.’’
