As Breitbart News reported in November 2023, an unidentified woman filed a lawsuit against the mayor, alleging he sexually assaulted her while the two were working together in 1993. On Monday, the New York Times reported that Adams allegedly “asked a colleague for oral sex in exchange for career help in 1993 and sexually assaulted her when she refused.”
Filed in Manhattan under the Adult Survivors Act, which provided New Yorkers a one-year window to bring lawsuits over sexual assaults that may have occurred decades ago, the woman said the incident allegedly happened when she and Adams worked together at New York City’s transit police bureau. At the time, she had asked him for career help after having been passed up for a promotion. In the 26-page complaint, the woman claimed that Adams drove her to “a vacant lot and requested oral sex.” When she declined, Adams then allegedly “forced her to touch his penis and ejaculated on her leg.”
“The effects of that sexual assault, betrayal and astonishing abuse of power, continue to haunt the plaintiff to this day,” the lawsuit said.
The woman claimed that she feared for her life at the time due to Adams’ then-status as a police officer with a loaded gun.
Mayor Eric Adams has denied the sexual assault allegation since the lawsuit was filed in November 2023.
“That is not who I am,” he said at a community meeting in December. “I want to be very clear: Never happened. I don’t even know who the person is. I don’t even remember if I ever met them before.”
The woman now lives in Florida and reportedly stopped working for the city in 1994. The lawsuit also seeks $5 million in damages and names the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) transit bureau and the Guardians Association — a fraternal organization of Black police officers that Adams had been active in at the time — as defendants. She also accused the NYPD of “gender discrimination, retaliation, creating a hostile work environment and inflicting emotional distress.” Per the Times, the woman previously filed lawsuits in the past that were unsuccessful:
The plaintiff has filed other lawsuits in the past. In 2008, she sued American Airlines and lost, arguing that an employee had caused her to fall out of a wheelchair, injuring her back.
She sued the Miami-Dade County Public Schools Board in 2009, arguing that she was denied compensation after she was attacked by a student. She lost at trial and then appealed parts of the decision to the Florida Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court, where she won several procedural motions but failed to win a retrial.
The woman’s lawyer, Megan Goddard, said in a statement that her client filed the suit out of a belief to hold sexual abusers to account.
“She knew that filing this lawsuit would cause her significant personal challenges, but she did so, nevertheless, because she believes sexual abusers must be held to account, no matter who they are,” she said.
