New York City Mayor Eric Adams denied accusations that he sexually assaulted a colleague in 1993.
The accusations come from a lawsuit filed in Manhattan on Wednesday night. It claims that Adams sexually assaulted the plaintiff in 1993 when both worked for the city government. Adams was a police officer at that time, according to US media.
The lawsuit also lists the New York Police Department’s transit bureau, the Guardians Association of the NYPD and three “unknown” entities as defendants. The three-page summons does not provide any details about the alleged assault.
The summons accuses the defendants of “sexual assault, battery and employment discrimination on the basis of the plaintiff's gender and sex, retaliation, hostile work environment and intentional infliction of emotional distress[.]” The lawsuit is seeking at least $5 million in damages.
Under New York law, plaintiffs can file a summons to begin a legal lawsuit and then follow that up with a full complaint laying out the accusations. The lawsuit was filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a law signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2022 that opened a one-year window for sexual assault victims to sue their alleged abusers regardless if the assault occurred beyond the statute of limitations. That window closes on Thursday at midnight.
More than 2,500 lawsuits have been filed using the Adult Survivors Act since the window opened. Several celebrities have been accused under the act recently, including Sean Combs, Jamie Foxx and Bill Cosby.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Adams vehemently denied the accusations.
“It absolutely did not happen. I do not recall meeting this person and I will never harm anyone in that magnitude,” the mayor said. “That is not who I am and that is not who I have ever been in my professional life… I have been in public life for almost forty years. People know my character, they see how I am, how I carry myself.”
The lawsuit comes at a difficult time for the largest city in the nation’s mayor, who had his electronic devices seized by the FBI last week as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged illegal donations made to his campaign by the Turkish government.
Adams, who has not been charged in that case, denies any wrongdoing. It appears to be unrelated to the sexual assault lawsuit.