Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday came to the defense of his top aide Tim Pearson, who was accused of sexual harassment in a lawsuit filed last week — saying that he deserves “due process,” while declining to address the specifics of the case.
The more than 50-page complaint, brought last Thursday by former NYPD officer Roxanne Ludemann, alleges that Pearson made numerous inappropriate comments to her and often touched her without consent while she worked under him in a recently established mayoral office. She also charged that Pearson blocked her career advancement after she rejected his advances, driving her to an early retirement.
Adams, during his weekly media availability on Tuesday, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, when asked by a reporter about how Pearson has avoided professional consequences over other alleged impropriety, including pushing and shoving a migrant shelter guard last fall. Pearson is currently the subject of a city Department of Investigation probe looking into the incident.
But the mayor still sought to defend Pearson — whom he counts as a close friend — by referencing his many years in the NYPD, including his involvement with the rescue operations during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center.
“In this country there’s something called due process and that due process does not change,” Adams told reporters. “Due process is the cornerstone of our country. That is what Tim Pearson did for a great deal of time, ensure people had due process. And as a person who was in the Trade Center when the buildings collapsed and saved a great deal of people in guiding them out and protecting this city for the amount of time he has, I think he is due due process.”
Pearson has not been placed on leave following the lawsuit, City Hall said. That differs from other mayoral staffers under investigation like another top adviser Winnie Greco, who was placed on leave after her homes were raided by FBI agents earlier this month.
Adams said he has not met with Pearson since the lawsuit was filed, saying the city’s Law Department advised him not to.
“My counsel is very clear: ‘Don’t get engaged in these conversations, let the system do its job,’” he said.
When pressed about whether the Law Department will defend Pearson in the case, a service funded by city taxpayers, the city’s Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix said that still has to be determined.
“This is a new case with multiple individuals and different entities and you are aware from General Municipal Law that we have to conduct representation interviews, those interviews will be conducted and we will make a determination when they are concluded,” Hinds-Radix said.
The Law Department is defending Adams himself in a separate sexual assault claim levied against him in November, the details of which came to light last week, by a woman he served in the NYPD with in 1993. The mayor fiercely denies the allegations.
The Pearson suit
In the suit against Pearson, Ludemann specifically alleges that he would often ask her inappropriate questions about her marital status and living situation while she was his subordinate in the “Municipal Services Assessment” unit, which is tasked with quality assurance for city agencies, over the course of 2022 and 2023. She further alleged that Pearson, on numerous occasions, touched and rubbed her back, shoulders and arms without consent.
Ludemann alleges Pearson asked her several times to become his driver, she believed to have unfettered private access to continue to sexually harass her.
Following Ludemann’s refusals of Pearson’s advances, she alleges he denied her a promotion she was seeking multiple times. After higher-level officials within City Hall and the NYPD caught wind of her accusations, the suit alleges, Ludemann was demoted to an NYPD patrol rank, moved around between precincts and denied overtime all at Pearson’s behest.
Feeling her career was permanently derailed, Lubemann said she had no other choice but to retire from the department several years before she planned to, at the age of 44.
“Plaintiff did not want to retire from the NYPD at that time but was forced to retire as the abuse, lack of promotional opportunities, harassment, lack of overtime, disparate treatment and retaliation became so severe that Plaintiff felt compelled to retire,” the suit reads.
