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NYC Mayor Adams sex assault accuser blames missed deposition on illness, pressure from mayor's team

Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News on

Published in News & Features

NEW YORK — Lorna Beach-Mathura, who has accused Mayor Eric Adams of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit, missed a court-ordered deposition this month because she suffered an anxiety attack at the last minute that required her to seek medical attention, she wrote in a new court filing late Wednesday that pointed blame at the mayor’s team for her breakdown.

“The day of my scheduled deposition, I woke up in an extreme state of duress, unable to breathe and hear properly with a hoarse voice, and throat pain. I became very concerned about my health. These symptoms greatly exacerbated my underlying anxiety and depression, and I realized that I needed to seek urgent medical care,” Beach-Mathura wrote in the filing submitted in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“Due to these unfortunate mental and health conditions beyond my control, I was unable to appear at my September 6, 2024, deposition. I apologize to the court and to everyone who was affected by my inability to appear.”

Beach-Mathura, who worked with Adams in the since-defunct city Transit Police Department at the time of the alleged assault, attached medical records to her filing showing she was treated at a Manhattan urgent care on the day the mayor’s lawyer was supposed to depose her at his office. She was diagnosed with acute sinusitis, for which she was prescribed antibiotics and steroids, the records say.

Beach-Mathura’s filing attributed her eleventh-hour health hiccup to “the great emotional distress and anxiety” caused by what she described as a concerted effort by the mayor’s allies and high-powered attorney, Alex Spiro, to portray her as a liar. She specifically pointed to statements disseminated by Adams’ office from Queens Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar and other supporters of the mayor who questioned whether she had “ulterior motives” in suing him.

“I was … utterly horrified to learn that the mayor and/or the mayor’s office apparently collected quotes from women leaders saying terrible things about me, even though none of those women ever met me,” she wrote.

A spokeswoman for Adams, who has vehemently denied the sexual assault claim, referred comment to Spiro, who didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions.

Beach-Mathura also attached multiple exhibits to her filing aimed at pushing back on Spiro’s suggestion that she hasn’t produced corroborating evidence for her claim that Adams sexually assaulted her over three decades ago while they were both at Transit Police.

One of the exhibits is an email Beach-Mathura sent on June 16, 2021 — a week before Adams won that year’s Democratic mayoral primary — to the New York Post’s tip line, in which she laid out her assault claim in extensive details that closely mirror the allegations in her lawsuit. She sent a similar message to email addresses for the mayoral campaign of Andrew Yang, one of Adams’ opponents in the 2021 race.

“Eric Adams talks proudly about his career and professional accomplishments in the NYPD. Yet I haven’t heard him talk about his sexual harassment of a co-worker when he was a detective,” she wrote in the message to The Post.

 

The Post didn’t run a story about Beach-Mathura’s claim in 2021. The paper didn’t return a request for comment late Wednesday.

“I did not hear back from either of my communications and as far as I know no one followed up,” she wrote in Wednesday’s filing. “I felt that the people of New York City had been duped when I heard that Defendant Eric Adams had won the mayoral election.”

Beach-Mathura, who currently resides in Florida, also wrote some of her relatives have recently been approached by one of Spiro’s law firm associates, Philip Jobe, who has introduced himself as an “investigator.”

“I became even more concerned for the safety of my friends and family as well as myself, and my anxiety again skyrocketed,” she wrote about Jobe’s visits.

Spiro, who’s known for representing celebrities like Elon Musk and was retained by the city Law Department to defend Adams, asked a judge this month that Beach-Mathura’s suit be dismissed because she failed to appear for the deposition at his Manhattan office. In an earlier Aug. 24 hearing, Spiro said Beach-Mathura’s claims are “fictitious” and accused her of trying to deliberately slow-walk the proceeding.

Beach-Mathura’s suit, filed in March, claims Adams, then a transit cop, tried to force her to perform oral sex on him in a car in 1993 after she approached him for help with an employment-related issue. When she refused his overture, he ejaculated on her leg and then dropped her off at a subway station, according to the suit, which seeks at least $5 million in damages.

The notice of claim for her suit was filed last November on the eve of the expiration of the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that gave sexual abuse survivors a one-year window to sue their perpetrators even if the relevant statute of limitations had expired.

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©2024 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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