Gentile’s Aide Decides to Air His Grievance
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Hours after the City Council’s formal notice of a sexual harassment complaint was hand-delivered to embattled Council Member Vincent Gentile in Brooklyn yesterday, his recently resigned chief of staff, who made the complaint, issued a public statement detailing his frustrations with his former boss’s “unremitting harassment” in trying to forge an intimate, out-of-office relationship.
In the four-page letter distributed to news outlets yesterday afternoon, John Martin, 26, who had taken over as Mr. Gentile’s chief of staff only three months ago, painted the 45-year-old council member as a nagging force who at various turns “improperly” intruded into his personal affairs, such as inviting Mr. Martin to live in his home when he was looking for an apartment, offering to share hotel rooms on out-of-town trips, and escorting him back to his apartment after nights out at bars in their Bay Ridge district.
The veteran politician also used bribes in attempts to sweeten their personal relationship, Mr. Martin claims in the letter. On one occasion, while standing at Mr. Martin’s doorstep after a night of drinking beer and eating chicken wings at a local bar, Mr. Martin writes that Mr. Gentile offered to give the $38,000-a-year chief of staff extra money from the council member’s recently enlarged personal budget – apparently to entice Mr. Martin, the son of a former city police officer, into letting Mr. Gentile into his apartment.
After a 15-minute standoff, Mr. Martin writes in the letter, the council member then asked to use his bathroom and, after acting surprised at the jagged tone Mr. Martin used in granting his request, Mr. Gentile backed off and “went outside.”
Only when Mr. Martin denied Mr. Gentile’s advances, he claims, did the council member begin to treat him unfairly and with a “testy” demeanor.
“The repeated overtures…were an overly intrusive and obviously improper intervention in my personal life,” Mr. Martin writes, and the council member’s behavior “forced” him to hand over his resignation last week.
Paul Callan, a Manhattan-based attorney who represents Hollywood actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Quentin Tarantino, was retained by Mr. Martin on Wednesday, two days after Mr. Martin first sent a letter of complaint to the City Council’s equal employment opportunity council, an entity now investigating his claims. Mr. Callan told The New York Sun that Mr. Martin was contemplating litigation and that a potential harassment case against Mr. Gentile was “strong.”
“The issue is not is Gentile gay or is he not gay,” Mr. Callan said. “The issue is harassment, and what you have here is an elected official abusing his power.”
A spokesman for Mr. Gentile declined to comment yesterday. In interviews with reporters since Mr. Martin’s allegations were made public, Mr. Gentile has denied that he harassed Mr. Martin and denied that he is gay.
“We welcome a public and expedited review of the facts of this case, and we’re confident the councilman was appropriate in his behavior,” a political consultant for Mr. Gentile, Steven Levinson, said.
One Gentile supporter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said,”All of this seems pretty weak. So the guy offered him his pull-out couch when he didn’t have an apartment. So they went out for beers. So he asked them to bunk up to save expenses. If these are the standards, then 35 of 51 [council members] could be just as guilty.”
“I wouldn’t want to invalidate Martin’s feelings,” the supporter added, “but how can you demonize a guy for offering you his couch?”
Many of Gentile’s supporters, including members of his own staff, yesterday began to question his candor. Contradicting the council member’s repeated public statements that he is not gay, a prominent city gay rights attorney and former Gentile staffer, Thomas Shanahan, told Gay City News that he and Mr. Gentile had been engaged in a sexual relationship since 1994, when Mr. Shanahan first began to manage Mr. Gentile’s failed campaign for state Senate.
In the interview, Mr. Shanahan said his reason for outing the council member was Mr. Gentile’s broken promise to gay rights groups and advocates that he would champion and vote for the New York State Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, which provides legal protection for gay and lesbian employees under the state’s civil rights laws. Mr. Gentile was one of only three Democrats in the state Senate to oppose the measure in 2002.
“He sold us out, and we were furious,” said Alan Fleischman, a former president and board member of the Lambda Independent Democrats, a gay and lesbian political club in Brooklyn. “He needed the support of Orthodox [Jews] and he knew that if he voted for SONDA, he wouldn’t have gotten it,” Mr. Fleischman said. “He was forced to oppose.”
The backlash against Mr. Gentile from gay elected officials and leaders of gay advocacy groups was so fierce that many refused to recognize him in public and ignored him at social gatherings.
Some critics yesterday questioned not only Mr. Gentile’s personal politics but the politics of the City Council itself, which Mayor Bloomberg recently chided as ineffective in its handling of the sexual harassment case against another council member, Alan Jennings. Proceedings on the case have been adjourned by the council’s Standard’s and Ethics Committee until next month.
At Mr. Gentile’s Bay Ridge offices yesterday, his staffers expressed feelings of confusion and betrayal. After the notice of sexual harassment in the workplace complaint had been delivered at about 11:30 a.m., Mr. Gentile fled his office without telling his staff where he was going and was missing all day.
More important, Mr. Gentile had always informed his staff that he was not gay, and Mr. Shanahan’s allegation of their relationship has left many questioning their boss’s integrity.
“The Pandora’s box has been opened,” said one insider. “Who knows what’s gonna come out next?”