[StBernard] Dave Peralta interview: I didn't rape my wife, bondage sex was consensual; discusses criminal probe

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Mon Mar 31 09:15:08 EDT 2014


Dave Peralta interview: I didn't rape my wife, bondage sex was consensual;
discusses criminal probe

Print Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Benjamin
Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on March 28, 2014 at 4:50 PM, updated March 29, 2014 at 1:41 AM
Video:
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/03/dave_peralta_interview_i_didn
t.html

St. Bernard Parish President Dave Peralta said he didn't rape his
now-estranged wife and that the couple engaged in bondage and role-playing
consensually, in an extensive interview in which he also said he is
cooperating with the criminal investigation.

"I believe that she staged the entire incident," Dave Peralta said of Sharon
Schaefer Peralta's accusation that he raped her at their home on Oct. 27.

The accusation led to a State Police investigation and to the couple's
contentious, public divorce battle. State Police sent the results of their
probe to the attorney general's office, which has yet to say whether it
plans to seek an indictment against Dave Peralta.

"My attorney has been in contact with members of the attorney general's
office," Peralta said. "We have voluntarily provided them with anything and
everything that they have asked for."

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune does not usually name people who report they
were the victims of sex crimes. Sharon Peralta has publicly discussed her
allegation in media interviews and in court filings. She and her attorney
didn't grant requests for an interview this week to discuss Dave Peralta's
statements.

In a civil court filing in January, Sharon Peralta wrote that Dave Peralta
had handcuffed her, beat her and raped her on Oct. 27, her 49th birthday. In
interviews she has said that she engaged in bondage activities with Dave
Peralta in the past, but that what took place on Oct. 27 was non-consensual.

"Maybe I didn't want it but he was taking it," Sharon Peralta wrote in a
court filing asking for a restraining order against her husband. "He raped
and beat me and then walked away."

Sharon Peralta said during a divorce hearing on Monday that she continues to
suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder due to the Oct. 27 incident.

In the interview this week, Dave Peralta denied that he sexually assaulted
her, providing some of his most extensive comments to date about the
investigation and the relationship with his wife, who until last fall worked
as a paralegal in parish government.

He said that three weeks ago he provided the attorney general's office with
photos documenting a "dozen-and-a-half times" in which he and Sharon Peralta
previously had engaged in bondage activity consensually. He said that he
also has provided the attorney general's office with email messages and has
agreed to be interviewed by investigators about the incident.

"I have nothing to hide," Peralta said. "Why would it bother me? I didn't do
anything wrong."

He said he largely declined to discuss details about the rape allegation for
several months after Sharon Peralta made the accusation, because parish
government "policy prohibits me from discussing any matters that are
currently in litigation." But he said a recent NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
story on Sharon Peralta filing a federal Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission discrimination charge against him opened up the door to allow him
to speak on the matter.

"She has exposed it, so now I can speak about it," he said.

Parish president claims rape 'was staged'

Dave Peralta said the accusation that he assaulted his estranged wife "was
staged" and that it was a "shake-up for the shake-down," an effort to get
money from him in the divorce case.

He said she originally asked for $72,000 annually in spousal support for the
rest of her life. The two sides agreed in court on Feb. 20 to a lump-sum
settlement of $4,750.

"She was trying to get the money out of me and I wasn't going for it. I am
not going to be extorted," Dave Peralta said. "It was, 'I'm going to hurt
you. I'm going to ruin your career.'"

Sharon Peralta in February told WVUE Fox 8 News that on Oct. 27 she was in
an upstairs room of their home when Dave Peralta "came upstairs and busted
in the door and forced my clothes off of me." She told the station: "I was
telling him, 'No, no.' I wasn't into it. And he just kept taking them off
and forcing me. And he pushed me out of that room, into the room across the
hallway. And when he got me over there, he handcuffed me and he tied me from
a rope that was hanging from the ceiling, which I had never seen before.
He'd never done that before."

In that interview, she said Dave Peralta forced her to perform oral sex on
him, then he removed the handcuffs. She left to another room, she said, but
"before I could close the door, he came from behind me and pushed me across
the bed and forced himself on me."

In his interview with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune this week, Dave Peralta
said her allegation that he raped her and sexually assaulted her "was simply
untrue." He said he had tied up Sharon Peralta with her consent before, and
that on Oct. 27 they engaged in the same type of activities as before. He
said "that is what she wanted for her birthday. That is what she asked for."

He added: "That is what she enjoyed. That is what she wanted."

Peralta said he and Sharon Peralta had a fight after having sex that
morning, and that she left the house. He said the fight occurred "because I
wasn't affectionate enough afterwards," he said. "That's all it was. You
know women. They like affection. But that's all. Nothing, nothing, nothing
major."

State Police arrival

"I didn't know she wasn't coming home that night," Peralta said of Oct. 27.
"All I know is at 10 o'clock that night I had a knock on the door and it was
the State Police. . . I didn't even know what they were there for. I was
dumbfounded."

The St. Bernard Sheriff's Office had forwarded Sharon Peralta's report of
rape and sexual assault to State Police. Dave Peralta said the troopers who
showed up at his house that night took a DNA swab from him, examined his
clothes and took pictures of him naked as potential evidence for the case.

"I kept asking that night if I was going to jail, as I could only imagine,"
he said. "That's an awful fearful thought for a guy who is a former police
officer and ran that jail."

"I mean, that is a pretty awful thing. I have never been in trouble in my
life."

He said that he wasn't arrested that night because "they knew they didn't
have anything."

"I think they saw right through it," he said. "I allowed them to look at the
room that supposedly was a sex room."

Sharon Peralta provided investigators with photos of what she said was a
"sex room" with bondage equipment. Dave Peralta said "there was no sex room.
It was created.

"... There wasn't ropes hanging in there," he said. "They asked if I had any
rope in the house and I said, 'Yeah, a couple of places,' and I showed them
where it was in the utility room, in the trunk of my car. They took
pictures.

"I think she basically set up the room to make it look like something that
it wasn't," he continued. "I think the so-called injuries that she claims on
her buttocks, I think that they were staged. I think she did it. I can't
prove it, you know, but it didn't happen as a result of me."

He said the same about reports from Sharon Peralta's rape kit showing
vaginal tearing.

"I can't tell you that it happened. I don't know. I think it was
self-perpetrated, but I can't prove that," he said. "I can only tell you
what I believe."

Investigation moves forward

When asked where he thinks the investigation will head now, Peralta said, "I
don't expect anything to happen.

"I think there is a good chance that I will meet with the attorney general's
people," he said. "I have already volunteered to do that."

He once more repeated that Sharon Peralta signed an affidavit on Oct. 28,
the day after she filed her allegation of rape, stating that she did not
wish to see him prosecuted for any offenses arising from the Oct. 27
incident.

Asked about Sharon Peralta's previous claims that he coerced her into
signing that affidavit, Dave Peralta said she decided to sign an affidavit.

"She decided to do it," Dave Peralta said. "I didn't even know that it was
being done. I had no idea."

Discussing the affidavit, Sharon Peralta told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
in February that, "Dave wanted me to lie and say I made up the sexual
assault so he could look innocent at the expense of me voluntarily
committing myself to a hospital."

Dave Peralta said this week that he had been attempting to get her help at a
nearby mental health facility because she has suffered from depression and
anxiety that caused her to exhibit "bizarre behavior."

In early February, Dave Peralta announced that he would be seeking
re-election as parish president in 2015. When asked about his chances in
that race, he said, "If you take the one issue involving Sharon and I out of
the picture, the personal issue, I've had an administration that has done
fairly well."

He said he believes that by the time of the election, the rape accusation
"will be well behind me" and that residents "will overlook it."

"It's been one incident in two years," Peralta said. "I hope that people
will be able to look past this."

He acknowledged that the issue has exposed a private aspect of his life that
he said he's been embarrassed to discuss, but that he hopes parish residents
will have an open mind.

"I don't know too many people that would engage solely in so-called, what I
would call 'vanilla sex' throughout their marriage anyway," Peralta said.
"We all have things in our background that we would probably be embarrassed
if they came out.

"...There's not too many people I know who can say there's not certain
things that they have done in their lives they'd prefer the world not
knowing about."

The Peraltas, who separated in December, can file the paperwork to make the
divorce official in late June, ending what Dave Peralta said was a six-year
relationship dating back to when the couple first began dating in 2007. They
married in March 2012, two months after Dave Peralta assumed the post of
parish president.

"I'm sorry that it has ended the way it has ended. I really am," he said.
"Certainty not what I would have chosen."



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