FLAGGED: Lawrence Taylor arrives at the Rockland County Courthouse yesterday with wife Lynette and a police escort. He received six years’ probation after pleading guilty to sexual misconduct and patronizing a prostitute, a girl who was 16 at the time. (Robert Kalfus)
Giants superstar. Pro Football Hall of Famer. Sex offender.
Lawrence Taylor, whose violent gridiron prowess petrified a generation of quarterbacks, was sentenced yesterday in Rockland County court to six years of probation for paying an underage girl pimped out by a thug for sex.
A judge put off ruling until April 12 at what sex-offender level Taylor, 52, will have to register — but the victim wasted no time blasting authorities for allowing the ex-Giant’s no-jail plea bargain to the charges of sexual misconduct and patronizing a prostitute.
“I do not think the sentence given to Mr. Taylor today was fair. I think Mr. Taylor should have to go to jail for what he did to me,” said Christina Fierro, 17, who allegedly was beaten and threatened by accused pimp Rasheed Davis — who is under indictment in Manhattan federal court — when she first refused to go to LT’s Suffern hotel room last May.
“I just want it to be known that I am not a prostitute. And it makes me sick that I have been labeled as one because of the decisions that allowed Mr. Taylor to plead guilty to patronizing a prostitute,” said the Bronx resident, choking up. “I am a victim and I am hurting.”
Later, LT went on the offensive in a Fox News interview, insisting, “This was a working girl that came to my room.”
“I didn’t go pick her up on no dag-on playground. She wasn’t hiding behind no school bus or getting off some school bus,” he told Shepard Smith.
“This was a working girl that came to my room.
“You can only ask. I don’t card them,” Taylor said in his first interview about the incident. “I asked her age, she told me 19.”
He admitted to soliciting hookers in the past, calling it a “clean” way to enjoy the company of a woman.
“I don’t have to worry about your feelings. It’s all clean. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s the oldest profession in the world,” he said, while adding that he hasn’t been with a prostitute since his arrest.
Fierro — whose name had been withheld by The Post and other news outlets before she appeared before television cameras yesterday — spoke in the company of her celebrity lawyer, Gloria Allred.
In court, Judge William Kelly had refused to let Fierro give an impact statement because the case involves misdemeanors and not felonies.
Allred refused to say whether Fierro will sue Taylor, who lives in Florida.
The teen yesterday insisted that when she showed up at Taylor’s motel room “there was some light in the room, and I believe Mr. Taylor could see my face and my swollen eye, and how young I looked.
“I also told him this was my first time and I was nervous and I didn’t feel comfortable,” said Fierro, who at that time was a week shy of the 17th birthday that would have put her at the legal age of consent.
“But he was all ‘relax.’ I did what he told me to do, because I was afraid what would happen if I did not. I was afraid I would be beaten again if I refused.”
Taylor’s outraged lawyer, Arthur Aidala, was quick to point out that the teen last May told The Post a very different story. Fierro had said that when she arrived at Taylor’s hotel, “the lights were off and [Taylor] didn’t see my face was bruised . . . Lawrence asked me my age and I told him I was 19.”
Aidala also railed that it was a “disgrace” that Allred had Fierro identify herself before the media.
“This young woman is being victimized once again,” said Aidala. “What just took place was absolutely unnecessary. Nobody knew who she was. Everybody in the District Attorney’s Office and the defense team went to great lengths to protect her name.”
Aidala and prosecutors both said that Fierro was consulted about the case, and that she signed off on Taylor’s plea deal.
Taylor will have to wait until next month to learn the conditions of his probation.
Aidala yesterday successfully argued that several standard sex-offender restrictions should not apply to Taylor, including prohibitions on computer use and visiting places where children congregate.
Asked by Smith how he’d eventually tell his 5-year-old son about his sex-offender status, Taylor accepted the shame that would come from that admission.
“It’s all part of what makes me who I am. I don’t run from it, I can’t run it,” he said.