The woman who has accused Denver Nuggets rookie Julius Hodge of attempted sexual assault was charged with crimes in four states, including perjury in California, and was fired from her restaurant job the day of her alleged encounter with him.
The woman, 37, was recently arrested after violating conditions of her probation on a menacing conviction in which she held a butcher knife to her husband’s throat, according to Jefferson County District Court records. She was released on bail Friday from the Jefferson County Detention Facility.
Denver police are trying to arrange an interview with Hodge, spokeswoman Virginia Lopez said. Hodge was out of town with the team when the allegation was made.
Hodge has denied the allegation.
“We view Julius as a victim in this case,” said his attorney, Norm Early.
Sandi Garcia, spokeswoman for the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said she is concerned that rehashing the woman’s background might prevent victims in other sex-assault cases from coming forward.
“If it was a mugging, we wouldn’t begin to look at her past,” Garcia said.
The Denver Post is withholding the woman’s name because she alleges she was a victim of an attempted sexual assault. Efforts to reach the woman for comment were unsuccessful.
According to records, the woman was sentenced to probation in 1985 for misdemeanor larceny in New Hanover County, N.C. In 1989, she was named in two misdemeanor check-writing cases in Alamance County, N.C., according to a court clerk. Authorities have not served her with an arrest summons, but those cases are still pending.
In 1999, she served 2 1/2 months in the Bucks County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania for an aggravated assault conviction, a jail official said.
In 2002, prosecutors in Fresno, Calif., charged her with four counts of perjury and welfare fraud after she was overpaid $9,798 in food stamps and welfare payments, according to Fresno County Superior Court records. She failed to report child-support payments she received from her former husband, records show. She served a 45-day jail sentence and was on probation for three years after she pleaded no contest to one felony county of perjury.
On Nov. 24, 2003, the woman held a butcher knife to the throat of another former husband, according to Jefferson County records. She was convicted of felony menacing in April 2004 and later sentenced to three years probation.
In a group therapy session, she called herself a “predator of men,” and was subsequently prohibited from having men at her house, records show.
She also violated terms of her probation several times by breaking her 7 p.m. curfew, according to a report by her probation officer. The incident with Hodge proved that she had violated her curfew again, according to court documents.
She was arrested days after she reported the alleged incident with Hodge, which she said happened on Oct. 12 between 11 and 11:15 p.m. at 300 W. 11th Ave. Early that day, she was fired from a job she had held for two weeks.
In a July 7 letter, she gave a judge a glimpse of what her life was like after her husband left her and she was convicted of menacing.
A pregnancy ended in a stillborn delivery after a doctor discovered her fetus was dead. She has been in and out of a domestic violence shelter and was forced to deal with the molestation of her daughter by a former day-care owner. She began drinking to self-medicate, she said.
“I am having a hard time coping with my personal life,” she said in the letter to the judge.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
