Mayor Eric Adams strenuously denied sexually assaulting a colleague in 1993 after asking her for a sexual favor, saying on Tuesday that the accusation was utterly false.
“This didn’t occur — it didn’t occur,” Mr. Adams stated in his first remarks because the detailed allegations emerged in a authorized declare filed on Monday. “I don’t recall ever assembly this particular person throughout my time within the Police Division.”
The lawsuit was filed in New York Supreme Courtroom as a part of the state’s Grownup Survivors Act, which supplied a window for individuals to deliver lawsuits over sexual assaults that may have occurred years in the past.
A girl claimed that Mr. Adams requested oral intercourse from her in trade for profession assist after they labored collectively at New York Metropolis’s Transit Police Division. When she refused, he compelled her to the touch his penis and ejaculated on her, the criticism stated.
At his weekly information convention, Mr. Adams didn’t take lengthy to handle the accusations, bringing them up earlier than being requested about them.
He repeated his motto — “keep targeted, no distractions and grind” — and stated he had all the time carried himself “with a stage of dignity” that New Yorkers count on.
“I understand how I reside my life,” the mayor stated, including: “I’ve been an especially respectable public particular person.”
The lawsuit is the newest authorized complication confronting Mr. Adams as he prepares to run for re-election subsequent 12 months. In November, F.B.I. brokers searched the house of his chief fund-raiser and seized Mr. Adams’s digital gadgets as a part of an investigation into whether or not his marketing campaign conspired with the Turkish authorities to simply accept unlawful overseas donations.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat, stated that he was sorry that his accomplice, Tracey Collins, and his son, Jordan Coleman, have been “going by means of this,” and stated that Ms. Collins had inspired him to be disciplined and to not “enable your feelings to get in the way in which.”
Town’s company counsel, Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, is representing the mayor within the lawsuit. Throughout the information convention, she interjected not less than twice to say that she and the mayor weren’t responding to particulars within the lawsuit and that she would favor that Mr. Adams not give his opinions on the case.
Ms. Hinds-Radix stated the mayor was entitled to be represented by her workplace as a result of the town has been obligated to characterize former Transit Police staff since that division merged with the New York Police Division in 1995.
“The mayor, subsequently, is just not getting any particular therapy,” she stated.
However, the association struck Richard Briffault, a Columbia Legislation College professor, as odd.
“It appears to me that it’s inappropriate on this case as a result of it has nothing to do with something involving his workplace,” stated Mr. Briffault, a former chair of the New York Metropolis Conflicts of Curiosity Board.
He added: “The occasions that have been alleged have been a long time in the past, as I perceive it. And there’s no allegation of misuse of workplace in any of this. It’s totally a couple of personal matter, and that’s the kind of factor that must be dealt with by personal counsel.”
The lawsuit stated that the plaintiff, then an administrative aide on the Transit Police Division, requested Mr. Adams for assist after she had been handed over for a promotion. Mr. Adams drove her to a vacant lot and requested a “quid professional quo sexual favor” earlier than he “forcibly pushed” her hand onto his penis, in keeping with the 26-page criticism.
The plaintiff felt notably fearful as a result of she believed that Mr. Adams, as a police officer, had a loaded gun within the automotive, the criticism stated.
“The results of that sexual assault, betrayal and astonishing abuse of energy, proceed to hang-out plaintiff to at the present time,” the criticism stated.
The lawsuit seeks $5 million and in addition names the Police Division and the Guardians Affiliation, a fraternal group of Black cops, as defendants. Mr. Adams was a frontrunner within the Guardians on the time of the alleged assault.
The lady, who now lives in Florida, has a historical past of submitting lawsuits, and has written a 52-page self-published e book about methods to characterize your self in court docket.
On Tuesday, Mr. Adams was cautious to not query the girl’s credibility. However the mayor’s workplace on Monday evening despatched statements to reporters from 4 ladies who criticized the lawsuit and the motivation behind it.
Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, who ceaselessly speaks in help of the mayor, stated her background as a lawyer had formed her opinion that the lawsuit had no advantage.
“As a lawyer who has devoted a good portion of her profession to class motion instances on behalf of ladies experiencing discrimination within the office,” Ms. Rajkumar stated, “I do know that yearly the American justice system experiences a big variety of frivolous lawsuits resembling this one.”
After the information convention on Tuesday, the mayor’s workplace despatched two extra statements, together with one from Hazel Dukes, president of the N.A.A.C.P. New York State Convention, who stated that “the outrageous claims made towards him can’t probably be true,” including that “he has the total help of me and plenty of others.”
