She is the fifth person to tell The Inquirer that Conlin assaulted her. On Tuesday, Conlin retired from the Daily News hours before The Inquirer reported that three women and a man said Conlin had abused them when they were children in the 1970s.
The woman spoke out Wednesday as the sports-oriented website Deadspin published an e-mail exchange between Conlin and Deadspin reporter A.J. Daulerio in which Conlin fretted about a then-expected story in The Inquirer that would report the stories of abuse. He contacted Daulerio, who had written a favorable story about him for Philadelphia Magazine, on Monday, less than a half-hour after an Inquirer reporter called him at his Florida condominium for comment on the allegations that he had abused children.
In e-mail messages to Daulerio, Conlin derided his accusers as "late middle-aged women" who decided it was "Sandusky time," a reference to former Pennsylvania State University coach Jerry Sandusky, who is charged with sexually abusing boys.
"I'm a lot bigger to the Daily News than Sandusky ever was to Penn State," he wrote. And yet, Daulerio wrote, Conlin feared the loss of his career.
"They can toss my good name out there while alleging a crime that was never charged?" Conlin wrote. "F- that."
Nowhere in the e-mail exchange did Conlin deny that any abuse occurred.
Conlin told Daulerio, who described himself as a longtime admirer of Conlin's, that he hoped to explain himself to Deadspin's "huge audience" but wanted first to see if "they [The Inquirer] name names. I'm sure the accusers were promised anonymity." In the story, three of the accusers, including Conlin's niece, were named.
After hanging up on an Inquirer reporter, Conlin, 77, said via e-mail, "My attorney will be in touch. . . . I've been doing this 51 years. My attorney will do my talking."
When he spoke to Daulerio, the reporter wrote, Conlin was "angry, funny, discursive - but he was also obviously scared."
