EXCLUSIVE: New Accusations Emerge Against Charles Pugh
DETROIT (WWJ) He said he thought former Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh was going to be his father figure, the dad he never had.
But that's not how it turned out.
"He was like implying that he wanted more than just a mentorship relationship, like he actually wanted me to move in," said Lincoln Jude, now 29, who has joined the list of young men accusing the well-known Detroit figure of pursuing teens for sexual satisfaction.
In the newest revelations, Jude said he was 18 when he first met Pugh through a mentorship program he ran in Detroit. He said things got complicated quickly.
He described one incident this way to WWJ's Tom Jordan: "Then Charles comes downstairs and he has this robe on, and then he once again tried to lift my shirt off, and then he opened up his robe and, like flashed me, it was the first time I ever seen him naked. I was like 'Oh wow, this is not normal.' This man is like 35 plus, flashing me. At that age I just couldn't comprehend."
According to court documents filed in another case, Pugh regularly viewed gay pornography while a Cass Technical High School student cleaned his house.
Nathaniel Hill, a now-22-year-old man also pursuing charges against Pugh, also alleged that he often watched porn out in the open with actors who appeared to be "very young."
"It was not unusual for me for me to come into a room and find pornographic material on Mr. Pugh's computer and talk to him while the material was visible," Hill said. "Pornography was a frequent backdrop to activities at Mr. Pugh's home while I was there."
This latest comes after a complaint filed last year alleged Pugh sent suggestive texts and spent money on another teenage boy as part of a sexual grooming plan.
In the civil complaint, that boy's lawyer has said that Detroit Public Schools failed to protect his client from Pugh, who met the teen through a mentoring program at Frederick Douglass High School.Pugh has denied any wrongdoing.
When the allegations surfaced in 2013, Pugh fled Detroit, and abandoned his council post overnight. He was spotted by a local TV crew in 2014 working as a waiter in New York.
No criminal charges have been filed against him; the civil trial starts November 3rd. Other young men who have since come forward, including Hill and Jude, may be asked to testify in the civil case, many predict.
