A male aide to Councilman Vincent Gentile filed a formal complaint this week charging the Bay Ridge legislator with sexual harassment.
Sources said the complaint alleges that Gentile made unwanted advances toward his chief of staff, specifically pressuring him to share a hotel room and accompany the councilman home.

There is no allegation of physical contact between Gentile and his accuser, who sources identified as John Martin, 26.

Martin could not be reached for comment.

Gentile said on Wednesday that he had no knowledge of the claim except what had been told to him by reporters in the previous 24 hours. He denied having done anything inappropriate and said he did not know either who had filed the claim or the nature of the complaint.

“It’s absurd,” said Gentile, 45, who during a special election in 2003 fended off rumors that he was gay. “We know how we conduct ourselves in this office,” the councilman said Tuesday.

Asked if he was gay, Gentile told The Bay Ridge Paper, “Absolutely not.”

Gentile went on to say that questions about his sexuality were misguided and revealed a double standard.

“The presumption is that if you’re a man in your 40s and single, you must be gay,” he said. “If it was a female in her 40s, this wouldn’t even be an issue. It’s the press asking this question.”

Council spokesman Paul Rose confirmed that a claim was received on Monday by an Equal Employment Opportunity officer and will be investigated by the council’s Fair Intervention Committee. Rose would not comment on the nature of the claim or the identity of the complaintant.

Sources said the complaint stemmed from invitations to share hotel rooms on a personal trip to Maine and a business trip to Washington, D.C.

Martin resigned two weeks ago, Gentile said, to study for the Law School Admission Test. Although the resignation was to be effective Sept. 28, Martin left the office as his name began surfacing as the source of the complaint.

As reporters questioned Gentile in his Bay Ridge office on Tuesday night, Martin was still at work. He left shortly after and did not come to work on Wednesday, Gentile staff members said.

Martin is the third Gentile aide since the start of summer to leave the office. Former spokesman Scott Gastel resigned in June. He was later hired as a spokesman for Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum. Gastel declined to say why he quit his post with Gentile and also declined to comment on the complaint against his former boss.

Sam Cooper, another Gentile aide, left shortly after for what he has called a hiatus to work on the John Kerry campaign in Florida. Cooper did not return calls seeking comment for this article.

Martin, whose father retired after 40 years as a city police officer, began working for Gentile a little more than a year ago. He was a community liaison, spending several evenings each week at civic association and community board meetings, before being promoted two months ago to Gentile’s chief of staff.

Asked a general question about the complaint, Gentile said on Tuesday, “If it’s John Martin — I don’t even know that much.”

Sources said that the trip to Washington, which had been scheduled for this week as part of a delegation of council members, was canceled on Wednesday, after word of the harassment allegations broke. The excursion to Maine, a source said, was a personal trip by Martin to attend a friend’s wedding.

After the Fair Intervention Committee gathers information — from Gentile, the accuser and witnesses — the claim, if considered valid, will be heard by the Council’s Standards and Ethics committee.

On Wednesday, Gentile said he called the committee but was rebuffed in his attempts to find out about the claim. He maintained that nobody would even confirm its existence.

Rose could not offer details as to when the investigation would begin or end.

The news comes in the same week that the committee began closed-door hearings on harassment charges filed against Queens Councilman Allan Jennings, who is charged with harassing at least four women, two from his own staff.

“The council has a strong anti-harassment policy and we take this very seriously,” said Rose.

The allegations, if proven to be valid, could be costly to Gentile, a Democrat, who is up for re-election next November in the hotly contested and decidedly conservative district, which includes Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst.

Gentile, a former prosecutor and three-term state senator, defeated Republican challenger Pat Russo by a significant margin last November. But earlier last year, a six-way special election for the seat — which was vacated by Republican Marty Golden after Golden defeated Gentile’s bid for re-election to the state Senate in 2002 — was clinched by less than 30 votes over Rosemarie O’Keefe, a Republican.

That election was marked by rumors, published in a blind item in the Page Six gossip column in the New York Post, that Gentile was frequenting a bar and restaurant in Manhattan called Lips. Described in a review as “lightly risque,” the West Village lounge features nightly drag shows.

A former spokesman for Gentile said at the time that the gossip had been leaked by supporters of Joanne Seminara, a challenger for the seat, who denied the charge.

Others suggested the Gentile rumor was spread by Tom Duane — now a councilman, then the only openly gay member of the state Senate — because he was angry over Gentile’s vote against the Lesbian and Gay Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA). Gentile was one of only three Democrats in the state to vote against that bill, which passed by a vote of 34-26.

A Duane spokesman at the time denied the Manhattan legislator had anything to do with the Post item.

A few days after SONDA vote, Page Six ran an item that all but identified Gentile as a “lame-duck state senator — who was spotted in a gay bar” in Albany and who “voted against the gay rights bill.”

Gentile called the item “hogwash” and told The Paper at the time that he “would not dignify with a response” the question of whether or not he was gay.

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