She filed sex suit vs. Greene in Detroit

Gertrude Faye Johnson, a former auditor/accountant for the Detroit Housing Commission, said she always used to flinch when Carl Greene sauntered into her corner office.

Her boss, then commission director, would shut the door, walk behind her chair, lean in and try to kiss her lips and fondle her breasts, Johnson told a Daily News reporter yesterday.

"I told him he wasn't allowed to do that," she recalled. "I didn't like it. I pushed him away. He'd stand there for a moment and then he'd try to do it again."

Two days after Greene accepted the offer to become director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority in January 1998, Johnson filed a sexual-harassment suit against him in Wayne County (Mich.) Circuit Court.

She said she settled the day the trial was set to begin. She wouldn't provide the exact amount but said the settlement came to between $50,000 and $100,000 - all Detroit money - "and not enough for what he did."

Greene admitted no wrongdoing. After he was hired in Philadelphia, a Daily News reporter asked him if he'd kissed or fondled Johnson, and he responded: "That's a question I'm not going to answer, but let me say that every allegation in that suit, I deny.

"I wouldn't like to see anything alleged in that suit happen to my [family] and I don't condone those types of activities," he added.

Johnson, who left the job and now lives in Florida, said yesterday that Greene's unwanted sexual advances scarred her.

"I had to go into therapy," she said. "You have the truth behind you, but it takes a toll on you mentally and physically. It's been a long, hard battle."

Johnson, 57, said she's not surprised that six women have lodged complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since 2004 against Greene, with allegations that include sexual harassment, verbal abuse, retaliation and sex discrimination.

"I feel bad for them," Johnson said. "He got away with it in Detroit. So I guess he feels like he could get away with it again."

Greene, who headed the Detroit Housing Commission between 1995 and 1998, made sexual advances to her at least four times and promised her a promotion if she submitted to his demands, she said.

"I'd be sitting in my chair and he turned me around and kissed me on the lips," she said. "I'd push him away as hard as I could. But he'd try again."

He was forceful, she said, even though he has no use of his left arm. Greene, as a 5-foot-11 high-school football linebacker, was injured on the field while making a tackle in October 1974. His arm was paralyzed when two nerves separated from his spinal column.

Johnson complained about Greene to the personnel department. "They did nothing," she said. "They didn't want to believe someone could do that to you. . . . So that's why I filed suit.

"He stopped after I filed the suit," she said. "He knew I was serious."

Her legal action fueled a firestorm of protest from PHA resident activists who didn't want Greene to get the job in Philadelphia.

Then-Mayor Ed Rendell and then-Council President John Street said that they would order an investigation into Johnson's allegations against Greene.

Judith Harris, a lawyer and former city solicitor, joined with a PHA tenant leader and spent two days in Detroit interviewing Greene and 17 others, ranging from a typist to a senior manager at the Detroit Housing Commission.

The consensus was that Greene's staff characterized him as a stern "taskmaster," but one who behaves professionally.

The PHA board chose Greene in a 3-2 vote. In Greene's contract with PHA, he was entitled to receive his salary, which was $160,000 at the time, even if he were found liable in Johnson's sexual-harassment suit.

Now, 12 years after she filed suit, Johnson said that she is still trying to heal from what she said Greene did to her.

"You get to the point where you have to live your life," she said. "You have to put it behind you. What he did wasn't right.

"It's a part of life I want to forget."

Staff writer Wendy Ruderman contributed to this report.