Metro

Fmr. Gov. Pataki reveals that a personal incident fueled his campaign to lock sex offenders in psych wards

Former Gov. George Pataki confided today that his push to have convicted sex offenders locked up in psych wards after they’d served their jail time got jump-started nearly two decades ago by an incident in which his own “family was exposed” to such a perv.

Defending himself in Manhattan federal court against a lawsuit challenging the psych ward incarcerations under his administration, Pataki recalled how he, his wife and his youngest son were walking with neighbors and other young children along a trail at Hudson Highlands state park near his hometown in Philipstown, in “1995 or 1996.”

Pataki said he noticed a suspicious man “who would stand and walk right next to us and the kids.” He said he asked state troopers on detail guarding him to check the man out and learned he had been convicted of “sexual crimes in the Rochester area.”

“My family was fine,” Pataki told a jury. “We had state troopers, but it just made me more aware of the horrors of those crimes.”

Pataki was on the stand defending himself in a lawsuit filed by five convicted sex offenders and the estate of a sixth seeking $10 million each over his controversial 2005 decision to sidestep recalcitrant state lawmakers and order “civil confinement” of more than 100 convicted sex offenders to psychiatric centers before a state court ruled that the practice was illegal a year later.

A feisty Pataki earlier testified that he never personally directed any state agencies to move forward with the policy but instead “directed [his] team” to meet with various agencies to see if the state had the power to implement civil confinement. When told he could, Pataki said he opted to move quickly following an incident at the Galleria Mall in White Plains were a paroled rapist stabbed a woman to death in a parking lot.

In an odd twist, Pataki had to admit in court that he regularly allowed his press secretaries to make up quotes for him based on office policies and that he “rarely” looked at his own press releases.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers showed four releases from 2005 and 2006 claiming that Pataki personally “directed” the civil confinement initiative after the state Legislature repeatedly failed to pass such a law itself.

“No, that really isn’t true,” Pataki said of the press releases.

rcalder@nypost.