A married detective assigned to investigate the rape of a 24-year-old woman has been booted from the Manhattan Special Victims Division after flying to Seattle, drinking with her all night — and then allegedly trying to tear her clothes off in a hotel room.
Hours before the disturbing encounter, the college student alleges, Detective Lukasz Skorzewski — in the midst of a nine-hour drinking frenzy — looked at her and said, “You’re my favorite victim.”
Skorzewski’s boss, Lt. Adam Lamboy, was also transferred from the elite sex crimes unit, though it’s not clear if it had anything to do with the woman’s claims. Lamboy, who also made the cross-country trek to Seattle, was present during an interview with the rape victim, but didn’t have any physical contact with her.
Sources said Lamboy was bounced to the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in May. Skorzewski was knocked down from a detective to a patrol officer and moved to the 114th Precinct in Astoria, Queens, last week.
NYPD officials said Thursday that the Internal Affairs Bureau was investigating the allegations. A spokeswoman wouldn’t say why Lamboy, 44, and Skorzewski, 31, were still on the job.
“I didn’t want to ruin his life. I just wanted somebody to know that this happened,” the woman told the Daily News on Thursday. “He was supposed to be my protector.”
The sordid tale began Jan. 13, 2013, when the woman, who attends college in New York City, reported a rape to Skorzewski of the Manhattan Special Victims Division. She told him she was raped by a man at his Union Square apartment after a night of drinking.
Skorzewski and Lamboy flew to the coffee capital to interview her in July of that year, police sources said.
The young woman characterized Skorzewski as an officer still earning his detective badge. She was surprised at how young he was, and thought he was cute.
The two officers interviewed her in an office on July 5, but she said she contacted them the next day because she had questions.
The cops met her at a pier dressed in street clothes around 3 p.m. and asked her to drink with them and another woman who was with Lamboy, she claims. She declined, at first. But the two cops insisted and Lamboy even assured her that she would be “safe with us.”
At around 12:30 a.m., she realized she’d left her car someplace else and the men offered to let her stay at their hotel. The other woman had gotten into a fight with Lamboy and stormed out.
The trio headed to the hotel. At first, she and Skorzewski sat outside because she wasn’t feeling well. Then, she said they went up to his room.
The woman recalled Skorzewski took care of her and made sure she was OK. He told her, “You’re really cool. No, you’re awesome.”
The aspiring detective let her have the bed and he slept on a couch all night, but she said the platonic relations didn’t last past breakfast.
In the morning, she says Skorzewski asked her if he could lie down and put his arm around her. Then he asked if he could kiss her.
She froze, outraged at the suggestion.
He was married with two kids, she thought. And he was investigating her initial rape case. She said no — but then they started getting physical with each other.
She said she told him she needed to leave her clothes on. Skorzewski laughed, she recalled. She had also told the man who raped her that she needed to keep her clothes on.
Skorzewski was aggressive, she said.
“He really felt me up, tried to get his hands down my pants,” she told The News. “He was trying to put his hands down my pants or work them up my shorts.”
She said she participated but then ended it. She got in the shower alone.
Once Skorzewski returned to New York, the two maintained a relationship over the phone, she said. Eventually he stopped calling and she worried that his wife had found out what happened.
“He should have been fired,” a police source familiar with the case said. “The woman was already in a fragile emotional state.”
NYPD Chief Kim Royster said the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau was still investigating the alleged incidents in Seattle. The woman said she reported the detective by writing a letter to a friend in the department.
Min Um-Mandhyan, a spokeswoman at the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, said victims who experience trauma may have impaired judgment.
“It looks like he took advantage of his authority and the situation,” she said. “He gained her trust.”
Lamboy was transferred because of changes in the NYPD’s top brass and because he was under investigation for allegedly taking overtime he hadn’t earned, another source said.
The officers involved couldn’t be reached.
Records show Skorzewski, who was promoted to detective this past Feb. 28, made a base salary of $83,802 and $117,588 with overtime that year.
The most recent records available show Lamboy made $115,217 a year base salary in 2013 and a total of $181,818 that year with overtime.
Lamboy got the police commissioner’s Theodore Roosevelt Award in 2008 after getting into a car accident that left him severely injured.
He supervised investigators on the notorious Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexual assault of a maid at the Sofitel New York Hotel on May 14, 2011. The case fell through because of issues in the maid’s credibility.
With Ginger Adams Otis
