A woman who accused the executive director of the Cen-Tex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of luring her to a park two years ago to grope her has sued him and the chamber.

Guadalupe Perez Gonzales filed suit in a Waco district court Wednesday against Joe Rodriguez and the chamber, as well as the local League of United Latin American Citizens, which her attorney calls the chamber’s “alter ego.” Perez seeks unspecified damages for assault, sexual harassment, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy and negligent hiring.

Rodriguez in May 2006 pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor assault with offensive touching charge from the incident. According to police reports, he drove Perez to Cameron Park East in December 2005 on pretense of chamber business, then groped and attempted to kiss her.

In October, Perez, a 32-year-old mother of three, sent notice to the chamber board threatening to sue if she didn’t receive restitution for “pain and suffering” caused by the incident and subsequent publicity.

Rodriguez and other officials with the chamber and LULAC could not be reached for comment after the lawsuit was filed late Wednesday afternoon.

The lawsuit claims the chamber was negligent in hiring Rodriguez after prior sexual misconduct cases and continuing to employ him even after the incident with Perez. According to the lawsuit, Rodriguez was accused of sexual harassment when he was working for LULAC in 1990. In 1992, while serving as director of the Economic Opportunity Advancement Corporation, he was sued by a secretary for sexual harassment, and he and his employer were found liable and ordered to pay $18,000.

Pat Atkins, a Waco attorney representing Perez, said the board’s decision to retain Rodriguez since the assault on his client “could be evidence that his conduct was ratified by the Hispanic chamber.”

The lawsuit also targets the local LULAC chapter, headed by Rodriguez’s wife, Waco City Councilwoman Alice Flores Rodriguez.

“What we’re saying is that if you look at the relationship between these two organizations, they have a common business purpose,” Atkins said. “There’s a very close relationship that would seem to indicate that those entities are interchangeable.”

The LULAC group helped pay for Joe Rodriguez’s legal defense when he and certain board members were sued earlier this year over financial mismanagement allegations. In a June 26 hearing in that case, Joe Rodriguez testified that he and his wife traveled to Las Vegas for a LULAC convention using the chamber’s credit card.

“They help us, we help them,” Rodriguez said at the time.

Atkins, trustee and past president of the Waco Independent School District board, said it’s a “coincidence” that the lawsuit was filed the day before the chamber’s annual banquet. He said it was urgent to file the case because the two-year statute of limitation is up Dec. 28.

“We have no interest in getting in the political fight over the control of the chamber of commerce,” he said. “These issues and that fight are unrelated. This is a lawsuit for Wally (Guadalupe Perez), not over the control of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.”