Capitol staffers say Dem no help in harass claims
ALBANY — A state assemblywoman running for Senate in an upcoming special election is under fire from two women over her handling of their harassment complaints during her time as chief counsel for the Senate Dems.
The women say Shelley Mayer, a Yonkers Democrat, did little to help despite being asked directly to intervene in their situations.
The two — Julia Lilkendey, who still works for the Senate, and Shana Wittenwyler, who left in 2011 — outlined to the Daily News the harassment they say they endured and how they believe Mayer and other Senate Democratic officials at the time failed them.
Lilkendey said she’d gone to Mayer for help after her male supervisor sexually harassed and stalked her. Wittenwyler said her boss called her offensive names and once tried to hit her.
“Mayer didn’t do anything for me,” Wittenwyler said. “She put me in more danger.”
Mayer’s reps and at least three former Senate colleagues don’t deny the women were harassed. But they insist Mayer as counsel followed proper Senate protocol by referring the matters to human resources or then-Secretary of the Senate Angelo Aponte.
“The harassment these women endured was and is unacceptable, and Shelley followed proper procedure by forwarding the information she had to the proper authority, who wrongly refused to take meaningful action,” Mayer campaign spokesman Doug Forand said. “As much as Shelley advocated for these victims, the authority to discipline staff who were not part of the counsel’s office rested with the secretary of the Senate.”
But Lilkendey and Wittenwyler aren’t buying it.
While making it clear they don’t blame Mayer alone, both said as the top female official in the Senate majority at the time, she should have been more aggressive in making sure they were protected.
“She was in a position to help all of us and didn’t,” Wittenwyler said. Both women noted Mayer could have gone to Senate leadership or pushed for their harassers to be suspended or removed.
“People don’t know how scary it is to report sexual harassment at work,” Lilkendey said.
Lilkendey said she came forward after seeing Mayer was running in a critical April 24 special election for an open state Senate seat from Westchester County that could determine which party controls the chamber.
She believed it hypocritical that Mayer, who was elected to the Assembly in 2012, was touting her support of a pro-woman agenda.
Republicans had previously criticized Mayer for publicly supporting then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver when he was ripped for his handling of sexual harassment incidents involving then-powerful Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez.
Hired by the Senate Republicans in 2005, Lilkendey was moved to the Senate media services department in late 2008, and was kept on when the Dems took over the majority in 2009.
In March of that year, her boss became Carlos Gonzalez, the son of former state Sen. Efrain Gonzalez, a disgraced Bronx Democrat who went to federal prison on corruption charges in 2010.
Carlos Gonzalez swung into the headlines himself in 2012, when The News reported he and his wife, Janis, an office manager for the Senate Dems, were running a side business that held erotic dance events for swingers. From the start, Lilkendey said, Gonzalez put her through hell. What began as unrelenting sexual harassment eventually turned into years of stalking, she said.
Lilkendey provided The News with a host of emails, texts and secretly recorded audio to back up her claims.
One email sent to her from Gonzalez’s Senate address on March 26, 2009, just weeks after he became her boss, contained the header: “Now check out this photo. AMAZING ART!”
When Lilkendey opened the message, it contained a picture of a naked woman from the back.
When the surprised staffer emailed back asking if the woman was dipped in chocolate, Gonzalez responded, “Only you would know. She looks like you.”
He also told her “he had a dream about having sex with me” and later that she looked “like sex,” Lilkendey said.
Gonzalez frequently invited her to parties he said would be good for networking. She never attended, but learned later they were swinger events.
She said the harassment eventually turned into obsession as Gonzalez left lengthy voice mails and sent texts often demanding to know where she was and