When DeMaria arrived home in the afternoon, his wife was sobbing and all three of his kids-ranging in age from 11 to 21-were emotional.
He wasn’t the only one shedding tears that day. Behind the closed door of his office, DeMaria quietly cried. The headline read: “Revelations We Cannot Quite Believe About the Mayor…But They Are All True.” DeMaria, the story said, had tried to cut off the blouse of an employee and exposed himself to her.
A regular column in the paper-which was apparently intended to be satire but wasn’t labeled as such, leading some readers to believe it was based on reporting-outlined a sexual assault complaint against DeMaria by a former employee. Splashed across the front page was an article reporting accusations that the mayor had coerced a City Hall employee to give him nearly $100,000 by threatening to ruin the man’s life.
