Ardila avoids questions about sexual assault allegations at community event
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Assemblymember Juan Ardila dodged questions about an alleged independent investigation he commissioned into sexual assault allegations brought against him last month. Photo via Ardila/Twitter
By Jacob Kaye
Juan Ardila, the Western Queens assemblymember who a month ago was accused of sexually assaulting two women at a 2015 party, refused to answer questions about an alleged independent investigation into the allegations when confronted by the Eagle at a neighborhood clean-up event his office hosted over the weekend.
Ardila, a freshman Democratic lawmaker representing the southern portion of Western Queens, skirted questions from the Eagle about the independent investigation that reportedly found him “not guilty” of the alleged 2015 sexual assault of two women he went to college with. The Queens Chronicle first reported the existence and findings of the investigation in March.
The opaque investigation, which allegedly did not include testimony from either of the victims, has yet to be released.
“We're just doing the work, serving the district, trying to clean up the community for Earth Day,” Ardila told the Eagle when asked about the details of the investigation, including if or when it will be released.
Ardila’s chief of staff, Kevin Jusino, had equally little to say about the investigation the assemblymember reportedly commissioned.
“The assemblymember has kept a distance [from the investigation],” Jusino said.
“I'm not at liberty to say [more about the investigation] and not only that, but my knowledge of it – because we're strictly focused on the government side of things,” he added. “Doing the work and stuff, responding to constituents, their needs and stuff like that.”
Ardila first took office in January 2023 after winning a contested Democratic primary to replace longtime Assemblymember Cathy Nolan in June. But only three months into his new gig, a woman who has requested anonymity alleged that Ardila had forcibly touched her and exposed himself to another woman at a party for Fordham University students in 2015.
After the allegations were made public, a number of elected officials, including nearly all of his Western Queens colleagues and the governor, and a number of his constituents called for him to step down. After issuing three brief statements, none of which denied the women’s claims, Ardila has said little else regarding the allegations and has thus far ignored the calls for his resignation.
But in the month since the allegations first broke, Ardila has been largely absent from ongoing state budget negotiations, iced out by colleagues who don’t want to be in the same room as him, the Eagle reported earlier this month. His constituents have also claimed that he has been inaccessible and that they feel they are going unrepresented during a critical time in Albany.
Ardila denied those charges on Saturday.
“No, we're having conference, we're speaking out in conference,” the lawmaker said.
He also said that any constituents that have “questions or concerns, they can find the office and we're happy to support. We're here to serve the district.”
But constituents have said that calls to Ardila’s office have gone unanswered. Some have scheduled one-on-one meetings with the assemblymember only to have those meetings canceled with little explanation.
The Eagle called both Ardila’s Albany and district offices several times each last week during business hours. Only once did a staffer answer the phone. They hung up a few seconds into the call. Calls to his offices on Monday similarly went unanswered.
When asked about his office’s inaccessibility, Ardila again denied that he was hard to reach.
“We pick up the phones, we speak to constituents,” Ardila said. “We're serving the community.”
Last week, a representative from Ardila’s office appeared before Queens Community Board 2 at the board’s monthly meeting. Danielle Brecker, the chair of the board and one of the first to call for Ardila to resign, told the representative again that Ardila “should really consider resigning.”
“A lot of people in the community have said to me, ‘this is really not okay’,” Brecker told the Eagle earlier this month. “The first step of restorative justice is to listen to your survivor, and if you're an elected official, the second step of restorative justice is to listen to your community and to try to restore that trust, and if the community is saying we need you to step down, he should be listening to that.”
Much of Ardila’s communication with the public over the past month has been over Twitter and at various community events like the Earth Day clean-up he hosted over the weekend – about half a dozen volunteers, most of whom attend a local church, came out to the clean-up event. Online, he’s mostly shared photos of himself interacting with constituents during “mobile office hours” and given his constituents his well wishes during a number of holidays. He’s also tweeted several times about some of his legislative priorities and legislative victories.
But earlier this month, a member of the Assembly who spoke with the Eagle on the condition of anonymity said that the allegations made against Ardila have made him persona non grata in the state’s capitol during critical budget negotiations.
“I think there are a number of members who do not want to share space with him…I mean that in the very literal sense – if he's on the floor, I know that there are people who don't want to be on the floor,” the assemblymember said. “His presence in a room has an impact on whether or not people want to be in that same room.”
“His actions in Albany are all in relation to these allegations, which he has admitted to,” the assemblymember added. “A vast majority of his colleagues are not thinking of him in any other capacity at this moment.”
But while Ardila has largely refrained from commenting on the allegations or the fallout from them, the assemblymember said that it’s unlikely Ardila’s colleagues are likely to forgive him any time soon.
“I think that's his play, to try and just wait it out,” the assemblymember said. “I think the issue is that for a lot of people, this won't be something that they can simply move beyond.”
The allegations against Ardila were first published in March.
A woman, who requested anonymity, said that while she was intoxicated at a party, Ardila, who she had not previously met, sat down on a couch “very close” to her and began to get “touchy.” He then allegedly attempted to pull her into a bathroom, before a friend of hers grabbed her, ending the interaction with Ardila.
The second victim, who has declined to speak with the press but has communicated her experience through the first victim, said that she too was intoxicated when Ardila allegedly took her into a bathroom and exposed himself to her. She then ran out of the bathroom and told her friends about what had happened.
Ardila reached out to the first victim via Facebook shortly after the party, saying, “Hey what’s up? Had a good night the other night. Wanna meet up sometime?”
The message, which was reviewed by the Eagle, was filtered into a folder designated for messages from people a Facebook user is not friends with and went unread for several years.
Ardila reached out to the first victim a second time in January 2018, the height of the #MeToo Movement, this time via Instagram.
“Needless to say I was a jerk (to say the least) and I wanted to reach out to apologize for that night,” Ardila said in the message reviewed by the Eagle. “Anyways I hope all is well and that you enjoyed the holidays.”
She replied: “Thanks Juan. That means a lot.”
Ardila then attempted to engage the woman in a more casual conversation, at which point she told him he should have stopped with his apology and blocked him.
The woman initially came forward with the allegations after discovering the Facebook message, Googling Ardila and discovering he had been elected to office.
“He's an elected official within my community, and he doesn't, in my eyes, deserve to have power in any community – or at least those people who are voting for him should know what he's done,” she told the Eagle in March.
Several days after publication of the allegations, the first victim joined nearly all of Ardila’s Western Queens colleagues, a number of his constituents and Governor Kathy Hochul in calling on Ardila to step down.
After learning of the review of the incident commissioned by Ardila, the victim began to cooperate with a criminal probe into the allegations allegedly spearheaded by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Both Ardila and his office have not responded to the Eagle’s inquiries since the allegations against him first broke.
