March 1, 2010
Paterson Is Said to Have Ordered Calls in Abuse Case
By DANNY HAKIM and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson personally directed two state employees to contact the woman who had accused his close aide of assaulting her, according to two people with direct knowledge of the governor’s actions.
According to one person who was briefed on the matter, the governor instructed his press secretary, Marissa Shorenstein, to ask the woman to publicly describe the episode as nonviolent, which would contradict her accounts to the police and in court.
Mr. Paterson also enlisted another state employee, Deneane Brown, a friend of both the governor and the accuser, to make contact with the woman before she was due in court to finalize an order of protection against the aide, the two people with direct knowledge said. Ms. Brown, an employee of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, reached out to the woman on more than one occasion over a period of several days and arranged a phone call between the governor and the woman, who was the companion of the close aide, David W. Johnson.
After the calls from Ms. Brown and the conversation with the governor, the woman failed to appear for the court hearing on Feb. 8, and the case was dropped.
These accounts provide the first evidence that Mr. Paterson helped direct an effort to influence the accuser.
Of Ms. Shorenstein’s call, the person briefed on the matter described it as an effort to “reconfirm what the governor had said before, that it was not an acrimonious — it was not a friendly breakup but it wasn’t acrimonious, that the allegation itself was not true.”
In an interview with The New York Times, the governor had characterized the fight as being “like breakups you hear about all the time.”
The call from Ms. Shorenstein to the woman came on the evening The Times was preparing to publish an article about Mr. Johnson, his past episodes with women and the police, and his ascent to the top ranks of the Paterson administration.
The person briefed on the matter said that at the time of the call, Ms. Shorenstein was not aware of the severity of the alleged assault, and that she did not believe that Mr. Paterson was aware of it either. Ms. Shorenstein failed to reach the woman, who has never spoken publicly about the episode.
Last Friday, Mr. Paterson ended his campaign for election, after The New York Times first disclosed that he and his State Police detail had intervened in a domestic abuse case involving Mr. Johnson, one of his closest aides.
Mr. Johnson’s girlfriend had accused him of choking her, smashing her into a mirrored dresser and preventing her from calling for help during a Halloween altercation in the Bronx apartment they shared.
Mr. Paterson he has stated that he was unaware of the details of the case until The Times reported them, and has said he did nothing improper. After the news reports, he suspended Mr. Johnson and asked Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo to begin an investigation.
Mr. Paterson’s office declined to comment on Monday, citing the pending investigation. John Milgrim, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, also declined to comment.
The descriptions of the governor’s actions come from two people close to him.
The latest revelations came as Mr. Paterson spent much of Monday vowing to remain in office despite pressure on him to resign and distancing himself from the controversy over the domestic violence case.
“This is a separate issue that really involves the problems of someone that worked for us and not me,” Mr. Paterson said at a Midtown breakfast forum.
To date, the administration has conceded that the State Police contacted the woman in the hours and days after the Oct. 31 alleged assault in the Bronx, and she has said under oath in family court that they harassed and pressured her not to pursue charges.
But the governor’s state of knowledge about the alleged assault and personal involvement in the administration’s handling of it have remained murky.
He has acknowledged having a conversation with the woman on Feb. 7, the day before she was due back in court to seek the final order. But the two people close to the governor also described a more concerted effort to contact the woman before the court date, one involving Ms. Brown.
The nature of those contacts and what Ms. Brown was seeking to achieve remain unclear. She has not responded to numerous phone calls and visits to her home. Her husband, in a brief telephone interview on Monday, said he knew nothing about the events and would not comment.
A lawyer for the alleged victim has confirmed the conversation with the governor on Feb. 7 and said that Mr. Paterson had asked if the woman was all right and reassured her that “if you need me, I’m there for you.”
Ms. Brown had also played a role on the administration’s behalf in characterizing one of Mr. Johnson’s prior disputes with a woman. Mr. Johnson, according to his girlfriend at the time, punched her in the face outside Mr. Paterson’s Harlem office in 2001, when the governor was a state senator from Upper Manhattan.
The woman did not file a police report, and Mr. Paterson’s chief of staff at the time, Woody Pascal, said he had intervened and counseled the woman.
Shortly before the article on Mr. Johnson was published, Mr. Paterson’s press office informed a reporter for The Times that it had unearthed a witness, Ms. Brown, who characterized the incident as nothing more than a verbal argument.
On Feb. 16, Ms. Brown was interviewed and said she had been working as a volunteer in Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright’s office, next door to Mr. Paterson’s Senate office, one day in 2001 when she walked out into the hall and encountered Mr. Johnson and a woman whom he had been dating in the midst of a heated argument. Ms. Brown said she witnessed no physical violence during the portion of the argument she saw. She said she felt certain that no physical violence had occurred.
“To me, it was more of a lover’s spat,” she said.
Mr. Cuomo’s investigators appear to be moving quickly in their inquiry. On Monday, they interviewed the two most senior officials in the state police, Superintendent Harry J. Corbitt and his second-in-command, Pedro J. Perez.
A lawyer for Mr. Perez, Stephen C. Worth, said he could not comment on what was discussed.
The investigators also were scheduled to interview the New York City police officer who first responded to the call at the woman’s Bronx apartment on Oct. 31.
Last week, after Mr. Paterson suspended Mr. Johnson without pay, his top criminal justice adviser, Denise E. O’Donnell, resigned, saying it was “unacceptable” that Mr. Paterson and the State Police had made contact with the woman and that she could not “in good conscience” remain in the administration.
On Monday, speaking at the breakfast in Manhattan, he stressed that he will not resign: “I think there is an hysteria that I’ve been the victim of over the past couple of months,” he said. “I’ve been resigning about five times before this weekend.”
Danny Hakim reported from Albany, and William K. Rashbaum from New York. Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Confessore, David Kocieniewski, Jeremy W. Peters and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/ny...2paterson.html
David Patterson, NY State Gov
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