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Kobe Bryant's Maid Sues for Harassment

Kobe Bryant’s 48-year-old housekeeper says that working for the NBA star and his wife was a living hell.

In a lawsuit she filed against the duo on Friday, Maria Jimenez alleges that the Bryants verbally abused her, humiliated her and denied her the health coverage they promised when she began working for them in September 2007.   The Bryants didn’t fire Jimenez, according to her attorney, William Vogeler, but Bryant's wife made it impossible for her to continue working at the couple's Orange County, Calif., home.

She quit but because the working conditions were intolerable," Vogeler said Wednesday. "We allege it was a violation of labor laws that protect people from working in unhealthy situations.

In one particularly disgusting episode, the Jimenez alleges, Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s wife, ordered her to put her hand in a container of dog feces to get the price tag of a blouse. Vanessa Bryant, the suit claims, "badgered, harassed and humiliated" Jimenez in front of Kobe Bryant, the couple's children and others. Almost immediately upon starting work, "Vanessa began a continuing pattern of verbally abusing and demeaning her." Jimenez said she was called lazy, slow, dumb, a liar and was cursed and screamed at.

Jimenez says that the only reason she discovered that she did not have health insurance was because she became ill and incurred more than $127,000 in medical bills for a back injury and surgery to remove an ovarian cyst.

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