It didn’t matter that her tenant was a convicted rapist.
When landlady Domenica Pedone learned that the white man renting an apartment in her Brooklyn house was dating a black woman – he had to go. That is what ex-con Joseph Wintje, 51, charges in a discrimination complaint he filed against his landlord with the NYC Human Rights Commission.
Wintje said he was in his new home only four days when his white landlord started complaining about his black girlfriend. After several more visits, Pedone gave him what he took as an ultimatum, according to the complaint.
“I don’t want her coming over here,” Pedone said, according to the complaint. “If I knew this, I wouldn’t have rented to you. I thought you were a nice guy.”
Pedone, 70, a retired Department of Education cook and a grandmother of six, said she was sickened by the allegation. She said she booted Wintje from the Bensonhurst pad after hearing from people in the neighborhood that he was a “bad man.”
“I am not a racist,” Pedone said. “I feel sick to my stomach over this. I haven’t slept.”
Her lawyer, Salvatore Strazzullo, said the commission offered Pedone a settlement to pay a fine of $5,000 and Wintje’s moving expenses. But she refused the offer to preserve her integrity, Strazzullo said.
The lawyer said his private investigator uncovered Wintje’s sordid past, including his status as a Level 2 (medium-risk) registered sex offender.
Wintje was convicted of first-degree rape and sexual abuse in a March 1982 attack on a female jogger in upstate Carmel, officials said. He was paroled 16 years later, in 1999.
Despite Wintje’s criminal past, NYC Human Rights Commissioner Patricia Gatling said the complaint was based on race. She said Wintje recorded Pedone objecting to his black girlfriend.
“You know what it is, one person comes in, then everybody comes,” Pedone said on the recording.
Wintje declined to comment about the complaint.
A trial date is slated for early November.