Legislature Is No Place for a Sexual Predator

New York Daily News
August 25, 2012

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/legislature-place-a-sexual-predator-article-1.1144201?localLinksEnabled=false


There is no place in the New York State Legislature for a man who committed the gross sexual misconduct ascribed to Brooklyn Assemblyman and Democratic boss Vito Lopez by his colleagues.

Lopez must resign — or immediately prove that he’s innocent of preying on young female aides with the sort of physical contact that demands criminal investigation.

Most grotesquely, as recounted in a letter to Lopez from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, “ You put your hand on her leg, she removed your hand and you put your hand on her upper thighs, putting your hand as far up between her legs as you could go.”

Silver also writes that a staffer who was forced to join Lopez on a trip to Atlantic City reported “that you attempted to kiss her, that she struggled to fend you off before you stopped and that on the drive back . . . you again put your hand between her legs.”

Silver further describes Lopez creepily requiring the women to write “about how much they loved their jobs and cared about (Lopez),” and that he “criticized their notes for being insufficiently effusive.”

All of which, if true, amount to an open-and-shut case of sexual harassment — if not criminal sexual abuse.

Silver properly sacked Lopez as Housing Committee chairman, reducing his office budget and barring him from hiring any employees under 21 or using interns.

But those sanctions are nowhere near sufficient to punish behavior that would get a private-sector boss fired in a heartbeat — and that exposes taxpayers to potential lawsuits.

Any official guilty of such conduct cannot continue in a position of public trust.

Also wrong was Silver’s decision to keep the Ethics Committee’s actual report secret — releasing but a sketchy summary on a Friday afternoon, when all of New York was focused on shootings near the Empire State Building.

The voting public needs to see for itself the full weight of the evidence. And Lopez, who denies any wrongdoing, deserves a fair chance to rebut the charges.

In fact, Silver should never have handled allegations this serious internally.

He should have referred the situation to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics — the quasi-independent watchdog Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature created last year.

When that panel finds wrongdoing, it makes a public report — and the accused official has the right to a hearing before a verdict is rendered.

If JCOPE isn’t already investigating Lopez (it declined to say either way on Friday), it should do so forthwith — and expose the whole sordid affair to the light of day.