Chicago- It was the firm’s Christian foundation, morals and principles that attracted Lori Johnson to AFLAC.

As a south suburban associate for the insurance company, Johnson said she was impressed by the prayer she saw at corporate meetings and the company’s demand that associates not engage in “conduct involving moral turpitude, dishonesty, fraud, deceit (or) wilful misrepresentation.”

But that’s exactly the kind of conduct Johnson says her ex-husband — also an AFLAC associate — engaged in when he had an affair with another AFLAC associate. Now, Johnson wants to hold the company to its moral standards.

In a lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court, the Naperville woman says the company allowed behavior to go on that violates its own policies.

She says sex pictures of Ralph Johnson and Margo Moore were passed around the office and the two bragged about their affair, as Ralph, a supervisor, steered clients from his wife to his lover.

Now, Lori Johnson wants the two held responsible for the humiliation their affair caused her — and she wants the company to come clean about the conduct it will tolerate.

“I firmly believe that AFLAC’s founders have created the moral turpitude clause so the standards can be upheld,” she said, adding that the “shameful wickedness” of an affair should prohibit Ralph Johnson and Moore from continuing to work as AFLAC associates.

Ralph Johnson, reached at his Tinley Park office, declined comment, as did an AFLAC spokeswoman. Moore, reached at her Palos Heights office, said the lawsuit is “bogus” and “I can’t have my name scandalized like this.”

Johnson said AFLAC regularly posts its job openings on Christian Web sites, allows prayer groups at corporate meetings and emphasizes the Christian principles of its founders in its philosophies.

In spite of those standards, Johnson, an AFLAC associate since 1999, said she became aware of her ex-husband’s affair in 2001.

Despite pastoral counseling, “I was shocked that Ralph would put down his own Christian values and beliefs” to continue the affair, she said. They divorced in 2002.

Since then, Johnson said, she was surprised by the lack of disciplinary action by AFLAC supervisors against her ex-husband and his lover, who she says continued to torment her after the divorce.

And though they all continue to represent AFLAC, Lori Johnson says her career has been sidetracked by the deceitful behavior.

“The embarrassment and humiliation were unsurmounted,” she said. “My entire world was turned upside down . . . it was my faith in God that allowed me to get through it all.”