Mayor Holley's assistant breaks silence

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) - Lorraine Stokes found herself standing alone at the center of a fierce storm last Summer. She is the former assistant to Mayor James Holley who filed a complaint accusing the mayor of ordering her to handle his endless personal chores and verbally abusing her if she failed. Holley faces a recall election next week, for the second time in his career.

"He was so demeaning and so erratic," said Stokes, finally breaking her silence in an exclusive interview with WAVY.com.

Her voice shaking, her eyes welling up with tears, Stokes said, "He would beat me down and break me, but I needed my job."

So, the mother of two stayed, suffering what even City Council called "hostile and abusive" behavior from Mayor Holley. "There's not but so much you can take. And I took it, and I took it, and i took it," whispered Stokes. She said she's been through Hell, something she never expected when the phone rang three years ago with the offer to work as the assistant to the Mayor.

"I had to put the phone down and I screamed and I thought it was one of the greatest honors in the world." But just days into her new position, that dream job became a nightmare. Every day was a struggle. "And then I'd get enough strength to build back up and come back and do my job again, then he'd break me down again."

The mayor's assistant, payed by Portsmouth taxpayers, is supposed to type correspondence and reports, maintain records, field calls and inquiries from the public and handle other items of city business.

"The city business was not a priority for him," Stokes said. Instead, Mayor Holley bombarded her daily with orders to handle his personal errands and chores: print up labels for his socks. Shop for a stun-gun. Purchase beauty products for his family members.

"I really did not mind doing his personal requests," Stokes said. "But they came so often."

More chores: order tummy-support shirts, exercise equipment, turkey neck cream, Gillete hair paste. Set up manicures and lawn service. Fill out sweepstakes entries. Deal with the mayor's tailors, personal accountants and gardeners.

"He wanted me to cancel a subscription he had to Playboy." The personal chores were endless, she said. "Which means that a lot of my city business would get pushed back so that I could take care of his personal things." But for Lorraine, all those personal chores were not the worst part.

She recalled what happened the day she searched stores throughout Hampton Roads for Mayor Holley's favorite cologne, English Leather, but could not find it. "He leaned over me and he pointed his silver ink pen in my face between my eyes and he said, 'If you can't do what I ask you to do, then I don't need you."

Stokes said the verbal abuse Holley hit her with when she was not able to finish his daily list of chores stung more than anything. She said Holley regularly growled at her, "Who you think they gonna believe, a nobody like you, or the mayor? I'm the mayor. If you want to quit, you quit you chicken. I'm gonna burn you out like I did the rest of them."

"The rest of them" was a reference to the numerous assistants Holley has scared off previously Stokes said. Working for the mayor was so bad Lorraine said, the women in the mayor's office came up with a code to alert each other when the mayor was coming. "It was almost like, 'Brace yourself, here he comes again."

Stokes said she went to supervisors many times for help. "I told them it was too much, I could not deal with it. And I was told to just keep him happy, just keep him happy. So, I would get myself back together and I'd deal with it some more."

So why didn't Stokes quit? "I couldn't walk out the door," she said, fighting back tears. "Who was going to support my family?"  Finally, after nearly two years, Stokes said City Council set a meeting with the mayor to discuss his behavior. "He let me know that if that meeting was not canceled, then he was going to see to it that I was fired. I said, 'Mayor that sounds like a threat. Are you threatening me?' He responded, 'Hell yeah.'"

Stokes said her supervisor, the city clerk, instructed her to write a confidential complaint. Then someone in the city leaked it to the media. Suddenly, Stokes was standing alone in the glaring spotlight. "I felt isolated and betrayed," she said. City Council fined the mayor and requested he step down. But, Stokes said she felt let down by councilmembers, the city manager and the city attorney because none of them ever reached out to her, to make sure things were made right for her. "They left me hanging."

The city announced that Stokes had been reassigned to a new position, but she said that was not true, that city officials left her sitting at home for nearly three months before finally answering her pleas for a new assignment. "I felt very, very let down and I still do to this day."

For everything Stokes said she suffered working as Mayor Holley's assistant, there was one thing that never changed. "As bad as it was, as mean as