(Paul Martinka)
(Paul Martinka)
ALBANY — A former staffer of Vito Lopez says the pervy pol became emboldened to mistreat his female staffers after seeing that the Assembly wasn’t acting on her initial complaint of sexual harassment.
The woman said Lopez liked to play “footsie.” She said he rubbed his feet on her under the table at a work dinner, upsetting her so much she cried on her entire ride home.
She also told how he stood near her hotel room waiting to go in with her at a conference in Lake George. When she told him his room was next door, he walked away in a huff.
“The next day, he didn’t talk to me the whole way back,” she said.
“It’s a subliminal message,” she explained. “It takes a while to understand what he’s getting at.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for two other women who reported harassment by Lopez are calling on the Assembly to push Speaker Sheldon Silver from his leadership perch for covering up Lopez’s repulsive conduct.
The women, Leah Hebert and Rita Pasarell, received a secret $103,000 taxpayer settlement from the Assembly.
Their lawyer, famed women’s-rights attorney Gloria Allred, said Silver’s recent insistence on Lopez’s expulsion was done only to “cover his own tracks and despicable, power-hungry behavior.”
“Silver actively chose to sweep the claims under the rug, refused to investigate and put more women at risk,” she said. “The women suffered in ways that no one who is simply going to work, trying to make a living, ever should.”
Lopez has denied any wrongdoing.