Another poll reveals that New York voters want Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to step down because of the way he handled sexual harassment allegations against former Assemblyman Vito Lopez.

According to the Siena College poll, 52 percent of voters said they believe Silver should step down from his post because he “failed the people of New York and Lopez’s accusers by not addressing the issue appropriately and by not being completely honest.”

A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University earlier this month showed similar results, with half of New York voters saying they believe Silver should get the boot.

A report released by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics last month showed that Lopez harassed at least eight female staffers and that most of the incidents occurred after Silver approved a $103,000 settlement with two women that required them to keep quiet.

“A majority of Republicans and independents, downstate suburbanites and upstaters, men and women, and a plurality of Democrats and New York City voters believe Speaker Silver should step down,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.

The poll results also show Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s favorability rating has dropped to 58 percent, his lowest ever as governor.

The Siena College poll was conducted June 9-13 by telephone calls to 804 New York State registered voters. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points.

Silver facing new lawsuit over Lopez settlement

The Assembly speaker is also facing a new lawsuit, the New York Daily News reported.

Robert Schulz, who has reportedly filed several lawsuits against the state, is trying to force Silver to pay back the state for the $103,000 settlement given to two female employees of former Assemblyman Vito Lopez when they accused Lopez of sexual harassment.

Shulz is reportedly alleging that Silver did not go through proper Assembly channels and the settlements were a misuse of taxpayer money.

“The money belongs to the taxpayers of this state and had no business being used for this purpose,” Schulz said.

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Two women who say they were sexually harassed by former Assemblyman Vito Lopez when they were working in his office filed federal and state lawsuits against him and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on Thursday.

Victoria Burhans alleges that Lopez offered her a tour of the governor’s Executive Mansion in Albany if she stayed overnight with him in a “Lincoln Bedroom” situation. The lawsuit also claims that Lopez told Burhans to have sex with a Cuomo official to help get Lopez’s housing bill passed, The New York Post reports.

Lopez resigned from the Assembly last month after two reports revealed that he sexually harassed at least eight female staffers, from commenting on their clothes, touching them, ordering them to massage him and telling them to stay overnight with him.

Burhans and Chloe Rivera allege that Lopez could not have gotten away with his inappropriate conduct without Silver’s “assistance,” the Post reports.

Silver allegedly knew that two other women were sexually harassed by Lopez months before Burhans and Rivera were hired, according to court papers.

Since Lopez’s resignation, more pressure has fallen on Silver to step down.

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Half of New York voters believe Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver should step down because of the way he handled sexual harassment allegations against former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

Fifty-four percent of men and 48 percent of women want Silver to step down, Wednesday’s poll revealed.

“The Vito Lopez sex scandal persuades a bare majority of New Yorkers that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver should step aside. A lot of voters say get rid of the pack of them; there should be a legislative house-cleaning,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

An ethics report released last month showed that Lopez harassed at least eight female staffers after Silver approved a $100,000 settlement with two other women who accused Lopez of sexual harassment. The report also showed that Silver’s office failed to refer the allegations to an ethics committee.

The poll also found that 58 percent of New York State voters would not want their daughters to be an intern in the State Legislature. Sixty-eight percent of voters with children under 18 years old said they wouldn’t want their daughter interning in the State Legislature.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s job approval also slipped in the poll, with voters giving him a 53 percent approval rating, his lowest since taking office. Still, 58 percent of voters think he deserves re-election in 2014.

The poll surveyed 1,075 New York State voters between May 29 and June 3 with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

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The city is investigating reports of sexual harassment and wildly debaucherous holiday parties at the Parks Department, where seasonal female employees were allegedly offered permanent jobs if they performed on a stripper pole.

A bombshell Daily News report casts a harsh light on the culture of a department which reportedly held Christmas and New Year’s parties at a secretive “boom boom” room one floor below the official party at a city-owned venue on Randall’s Island, where women were pressured into provocative behavior by men in positions of power. The allegations go back to 2009.

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After he callously ate pretzels as she tried to tell him that a colleague had raped her, Elizabeth Crothers did not hold back slamming Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in interviews two years later, when it was revealed that the same colleague who raped her had raped another young woman.

The speaker’s office apparently sent Crothers a threatening letter in an attempt to shut her up when she started granting interviews vilifying him and her accused rapist, Assembly lawyer Michael Boxley, she told the Daily News.

The threatening letter was sent to her attorney from top assembly lawyer William Collins and appeared to suggest she would be trashed in the press if she did not back off.

Collins’ letter accused Crothers of lying, and said the interviews she had been doing waived her right to confidentiality under the assembly’s sexual harassment policy.

“I am compelled to conclude that Ms. Crothers has chosen to waive whatever protections would otherwise be afforded her by the confidentiality provisions … of the assembly’s sexual harassment policy,” Collins wrote in the June 30, 2003, letter, according to a copy obtained by the Daily News.

Assembly spokesman Michael Whyland reportedly dismissed the letter as “old communications.”

Whyland told Metro that the Speaker’s office has not had any communication with Boxley since 2003, when the second accusation came to light.

According to the North Country Gazette, Boxley paid a $1,000 fine after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of sexual misconduct in 2003. He was also reportedly required to register as a sex offender. In the criminal complaint for that case, the accuser claimed Boxley raped her four times during the early morning hours of June 10, 2003, the North Country Gazette reported. The Gazette said that as part of the deal, four felony rape charges against Boxley, then 44, were dismissed after he admitted to engaging in sexual intercourse with the 22-year-old woman without her consent.

Three years later, the Gazette reported, the Speaker’s office paid the woman a $500,000 settlement and modified its sexual harassment policies to require that all written complaints of harassment be kept on file for seven years.

Collins, the lawyer who reportedly sent Crothers the letter on Silver’s behalf, also reportedly played an integral role in the confidential settlement arranged by Silver’s office with two women who reported being sexually harassed by former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, according to the Daily News.

A recently released 68-page ethics committee report detailed sexual harassment claims against Lopez by several other female staffers. The accusations range from him forcing a staffer to massage his hand after she told him she was raped in college, to staffers contracting pink eye after being made to apply eye drops to Lopez’s infected eyes.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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As Vito Lopez resigned from the state assembly amid a sexual harassment scandal Monday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver proposed sweeping changes to sexual harassment policies amid mounting criticism of the way he’d handled the affair.

Silver announced plans to create an independent investigator to look into all sexual harassment complaints reported to the assembly, the New York Post reports.

Secret settlements — like the one Silver approved for two of Lopez’s accusers last year — would be banned, according to the proposed changes, and all sexual harassment complaints must be reported immediately.

The proposals come as women’s groups, government watchdog organizations and others have called for Silver’s resignation. According to a report by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics released last week, Silver’s staff failed to refer initial sexual harassment allegations against Lopez to an ethics committee.

A special prosecutor who cleared Lopez of criminal charges due to a lack of evidence said what he found in the investigation was “alarming,” and that the way the assembly’s leadership handled the allegations encouraged Lopez to continue with his inappropriate conduct.

Lopez resigned Monday morning after 28 years in the assembly.

Silver said on Monday, “I never gave any thought to resigning.”

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New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced Thursday night that he would take steps to recommend the expulsion of State Assemblyman Vito Lopez after a scathing report detailing sexual harassment allegations against Lopez was released on Wednesday.

Silver said Thursday that he would introduce a resolution on Friday asking the Assembly’s Ethics and Guidance Committee to “recommend appropriate sanctions including expulsion” against Lopez, the New York Times reports.

The announcement comes after Silver, a Manhattan democrat, himself has been under attack for his handling of the allegations following the Joint Commission on Public Ethics’ report and a separate report by Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan.

With Silver’s approval, the Assembly’s leadership secretly settled two sexual harassment allegations against Lopez and failed to refer the cases to an ethics committee for investigation, the Times reports.

Lopez has maintained his innocence. He was re-elected last year after the allegations first became public, and he has been eying a City Council run.

But the lengthy JCOPE report released this week has stirred more anger towards the assemblyman. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday that he believes Lopez should be expelled if he does not resign.

According to the report, Lopez demanded female staffers to massage him, send him flirtatious text messages, wear revealing clothing and stay overnight in hotel rooms with him.

Elected officials from both parties have called for Lopez’s expulsion, the Times reports. Republicans called for Silver’s ouster as well, while Democrats generally said they believe Silver has acknowledged his mistakes and will handle future allegations differently.

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On the same day that a special investigator announced that State Assemblyman Vito Lopez will not face criminal charges over allegations that he sexually harassed female staffers, the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics released a 70-page report containing graphic details of the assemblyman’s alleged abused, and how he got away with it for so long.

Lopez forced his hands up one woman’s legs, the report revealed. He told the women to wear low-cut blouses, miniskirts and high heels. He tried to persuade some of the women to stay overnight with him in hotel rooms. And he forced one woman to rub his hand even as she cried because she told him she had been raped in college, the New York Times reported.

The report also detailed how the assembly’s leadership protected Lopez from public scrutiny amid the sexual harassment allegations. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Speaker’s staff members failed to investigate or refer the allegations to the assembly’s ethics committee, the Times reports.

Eight women were harassed by Lopez, according to the report. The employees feared that Lopez would use his power to ruin their careers if they complained.

The report was released shortly after Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan said Wednesday that Lopez would not be charged over sexual harassment allegations following a months-long investigation because there was not enough evidence to prove “a chargeable crime was committed within the confines of Kings County.”

Donovan said, however, that “what we found is certainly alarming.” He said the way in which assembly leaders handled a confidential settlement with women in a separate incident encouraged Lopez to continue with his inappropriate conduct.

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State Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who is accused in a sexual harassment scandal, is expected to escape all criminal charges against him, the New York Post reports. 

The prosecutor in the trial will announce Wednesday that there was not enough evidence to charge Lopez, sources told the Post. The assemblyman is accused of groping young female staffers.

The scandal, which became public last summer, also revealed that State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Speaker authorized a settlement of more than $100,000 in taxpayer money with two other women who made previous allegations against Lopez.

Lopez remains in the assembly, but was forced to step down as Brooklyn’s Democratic Party leader. The assemblyman held a fundraiser last month for a possible City Council run.

National Organization for Women president Sonia Ossorio blasted Lopez today, saying he should be expelled from political office, now and in the future.

“The Assembly engaged in a shameful cover-up at great expense to all women who live and work in New York State,” she said.  “Despite the fact that no criminality was found, Mr. Lopez is clearly unfit for office.”

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The New York State Legislature has sent a letter to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics demanding that any mention of Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office be removed from an investigative report into sexual harassment allegations against Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the New York Times reported.

The letter states that the inquest into the role played by Silver’s office is outside of the jurisdiction of the ethics regulators.

Following the public outing of the Lopez scandal last summer, Silver admitted he authorized a settlement with other women who had made allegations of sexual harassment by Lopez.

Silver has previously called for the release of the report in full, which his spokesman repeated following the release of the letter.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Anthonine Pierre and Marly Pierre-Louis hope to change their community where men can be aggressive to women out walking.
Credit: Aaron Adler

The Brooklyn Movement Center is taking on the streets of Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights to change the way women move through the neighborhoods — or more specifically, to change the way the neighborhoods interact with the women within them.

“There’s a basic modicum of respect that women aren’t afforded while trying to navigate these streets,” BMC lead organizer Anthonine Pierre told Metro. “It seems very complicated sometimes for men, but it’s pretty simple: use words that are respectful, and if a woman doesn’t want to speak to you, stop talking to her.”

At a chalk party last month in a park in Bed-Stuy, she and BMC communications organizer Marly Pierre-Louis were able to speak with some men in the neighborhood, but Pierre-Louis said that the conversation “definitely made it clear that we had a lot of work cut out for us.”

“It’s going to take more than a conversation in the park to get a man to understand what women experience,” Pierre-Louis said. “They just don’t see it as harassment, they can’t understand it.”

Pierre said some men complained of the way women respond to them, saying, “All I want to do is say good morning to you and I get my head chewed off.”

She pointed out that while one man may simply be saying good morning, the woman may have had to walk through several other men who used less kind language.

Pierre-Louis said it’s hard to even cite specific incidents because “it happens so frequently and so casually.”

The women described stories they’d heard from other women, some of whom have even had to deal with threats of rape. One women reported a man saying “next time I see you, I’ll rape you,” and another said that after she ignored a man’s advances, he told her, “you’re lucky I don’t rape you.”

Other women reported having glass bottles thrown at them and being spat at from cars that drive slowly by. Many women say they’ve been followed, either on foot or by men in vehicles.

Even things as seemingly innocuous as cat-calling or blowing kisses are harmful, Pierre said, and “still contribute to the way a woman moves psychologically through her neighborhood.”

She and Pierre-Louis are hoping to do action projects throughout the summer, as the warm weather increases women’s risk for harassment.

“We’re going to be identifying high-risk harassment areas in the neighborhood,” Pierre-Louis said, “and be very visible in those areas and make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention to the issue.”

In the fall, they hope to start some allied work with men who could undergo community organizing training to do outreach with other men and help facilitate conversations around the fundamental question: how do we transform our neighborhood?

“We can think about how to keep ourselves as women safer, we can tell our stories,” she added. “But solutions are going to have to come from community dialogue.”

She noted that men “have been taught by society how to talk to women in the street.”

“We’d like for everyone to sort of have a new way of dealing with each other,” she said. “The question is: how do we have the dialogue so that can happen, so we can be a community?”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The special prosecutor investigating sexual harassment allegations against Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, has requested that the legislative ethics committee of the New York State Legislature withhold the report they’ve drafted until his investigation is finished, the NY Times reported.

However, a source allegedly told the Daily News the delay is “probably indefinite.”

According to the Daily News, the report “eviscerates” Lopez, and also does not reflect well on Speaker Sheldon Silver, who became entangled with the issue over a $103,000 settlement given to two female staffers who accused Lopez of harassment. The report allegedly does not say that Silver or his staff committed any ethical or criminal violation.

The report also allegedly describes new or worse instances of inappropriate touching by Lopez, according to the Times, though it is not clear if those details are grounds for criminal charges or simply unsavory.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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