CIVIC CENTER — A rape victim who accused a pair of NYPD Special Victims Unit officers — who were supposed to be investigating her rape attack — of taking her on a bar crawl and then groping her has accepted a $10,000 settlement from the city, according to the city’s Law Department.
Under the agreement, the city will pay the woman $5,000 and the other $5,000 will come from disgraced former NYPD Detective Lukasz Skorzewski and retired Lieutenant Adam Lamboy, who the plaintiff accused of taking advantage of her. The plaintiff had accused Skorzewski of assaulting her when the pair flew out to Seattle in 2013 to interview her about a sexual assault in Union Square, according to the Law Department and court documents.
The settlement was first reported by The Daily News.
The 25-year-old victim agreed on Monday to settle her suit against the city and Skorzewski, who she accused of groping her when she stayed at his and Lamboy’s hotel after they took her on a bar crawl around Seattle.
According to the woman, whose name DNAinfo New York is withholding, Skorzewski flirted with her throughout the marathon drinking session, telling the rape survivor “you’re my favorite victim.”
The charges became public when the woman sued the city in 2015, and Skorzewski subsequently hit back at her with a countersuit, accusing the woman of defamation. The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial before a federal judge on Monday, but the parties agreed instead to settle, according to a Law Department spokesman.
“This settlement was in the interest of all parties,” a spokesman said.
Lawyers for the woman and for Skorzewski did not respond to requests for comment, but the woman’s lawyer, Christopher Galiardo, said in court that she was eager to put the incident behind her.
"She wants to move on with her life and does not want to relive the incidents in open court," Galiardo said.
According to the original complaint, filed in 2015, Skorzewski and Lamboy flew out to Seattle on July 6, 2013 to interview the woman about an incident earlier that year in which her acquaintance raped her in his Union Square apartment. After meeting with the two, as well as a female NYPD detective who was dating Lamboy, the woman stood up to go home, but Lamboy urged her to stay and hang out with them, the complaint alleged.
The woman said she expressed misgivings about joining the group in a social setting, but Lamboy said it would be OK, and joked “we’ll protect you,” and urged her to order a drink even though she told the officers that she didn't usually drink in the middle of the day, according to the complaint.
As the day progressed, the police continued drinking and encouraged the woman to do the same, all while discussing the details of her case as they hit up other nearby bars until the visibly intoxicated officers were eventually cut off by a bartender, according to the complaint.
After they were cut off, the woman told the officers she needed to go home, but instead they insisted that she stay with them, she said. When they got to the hotel, Lamboy headed to one room and told Skorzewski to “take care of” her, the complaint said.
Skorzewski initially gave the woman his hotel bed and took a couch for himself, but that morning at about 10 a.m. he climbed into bed with her, began to touch her, and told the woman that he wanted to kiss her, according to the complaint.
Eventually she made it out of the bed and got into the shower where she broke down and cried, and when she got out Skorzewski told her that the incident couldn’t leave the room, she said.
When the officers left Seattle on July 8, Lamboy said they would continue investigating the Union Square sexual assault, but warned her not to mention the events in Seattle because their “credibility would be shot,” she said.
Over the next few months she stayed silent because she feared that if she went public with the incident it would harm the sexual assault case, but Skorzewski bombarded her with phone calls and text messages to discuss unrelated matters, and told the woman “I’ve never bonded with a victim like this before,” according to the complaint.
In August of that year, he blamed her for causing discord in his life, and said his wife would leave him if she found out, the woman said, according to the complaint.
The sexual assault case was eventually closed without explanation, and the woman said that as far as she knew the officers had never spoken with her accused attacker, the complaint said.
In December 2014, the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau investigated the pair for their conduct, the complaint said. Lamboy was docked pay and transferred out of SVU before retiring, and Skorzewski was demoted and removed from the unit, according to the complaint.
Skorzewski’s name resurfaced in November, when a rape victim testified that he had repeatedly ignored her case and dismissed her claims because she had once dated her attacker.
