Continuing a debate about over domestic violence in the race for district attorney, Republican Kate Murray on Tuesday demanded Democrat Madeline Singas fire the top administrator in the district attorney’s office.
At a press conference, Murray said acting DA Singas’ reluctance to fire Jeffrey Stein, her chief administrative officer in her office, after his wife alleged he abused her in divorce papers shows she is “unfit to serve.”
“How can domestic abuse victims and members of the acting DA’s staff feel safe?” said Murray, flanked by six women supporting her campaign. “The DA’s office should be a safe haven, not a place where people should fear being further victimized.”
Carole Mundy, Stein’s estranged wife, said in divorce filings that Stein engaged in “predatory and extreme depraved antisocial sexual conduct” that left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an Aug. 31 New York Post article that Murray cited in Tuesday’s speech.
The Hempstead town supervisor called Stein’s behavior “demeaning, degrading and abusive,” adding that she has started an online petition calling for Singas to fire him.
“I will fire Jeff Stein on day one as Nassau’s district attorney,” Murray said.
No criminal charges have been filed against Stein, and Murray said Tuesday that she had not examined Mundy’s divorce filings herself.
Isaac Goldberg, Singas’ campaign manager, said Murray was “shamefully slinging mud” by making Stein’s divorce an issue.
He said he thinks Murray used the press conference as a distraction from Monday’s New York Daily News editorial that called her “utterly unprepared to serve as Nassau DA.”
“The only candidate in this race who has credibility prosecuting domestic violence is Madeline Singas, and Murray’s desperate effort to distract from her embarrassing ignorance of criminal law is despicable,” Goldberg said.
Murray also criticized Singas’ handling of a 2006 domestic violence case that she tried to dismiss because prosecutors thought the alleged victim was using it to manipulate the courts and affect her divorce proceedings, according to Newsday.
Murray said Singas “blamed the victim” and “ignored” a judge’s order to prosecute the case.
Responding to a TV ad Murray’s campaign released Oct. 7 about the case, Singas told Newsday she thought the claim was “absolutely manipulative, reckless and really despicable.”
Murray’s campaign also lodged both criticisms in another ad released Oct. 13, a week before the press conference.
Murray also said Tuesday that an increase in Nassau domestic violence cases — from 1,976 in 2009 to 2,360 in 2013 — proves Singas “has a history of not protecting victims.”
But Goldberg said the increase shows more victims have felt safe enough to bring cases forward under Singas, who has served as DA since January.
Singas, whose efforts tackling domestic violence garnered endorsements from five women’s rights groups, has also taken Murray to task for what her campaign says is a sparse record on the issue.
In an Oct. 9 news release, Singas said Murray overstates her work at the Suffolk University Battered Women’s Project, where she interned while attending law school.
“As someone who has spent her career fighting for victims of domestic violence, I find it outrageous that Kate Murray is attempting to pass off a one-day a week law school internship from 25 years ago as giving her the skills and experience to protect victims of domestic violence from their abusive and violent batterers,” Singas said in the release.
