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 Appearing on the nationally syndicated "Dr. Phil" television
show, the woman, V. Stiviano, 31, denied repeatedly and emphatically
that she had ever had been physically intimate with the 80-year-old
billionaire.
"I have never had any sexual relations ... any kind of sexual
contact with Mr. Sterling whatsoever," she said.
Stiviano also insisted she never used seduction to obtain the
expensive gifts he furnished her, including several luxury cars and
the $1.8 million Los Angeles duplex, as Sterling's estranged wife,
Shelly, has alleged in a lawsuit.
"It was not a sugar-daddy relationship," she told TV therapist Phil
McGraw, adding that Sterling lavished her with gifts "because he
cares about me, and I'm a good human being."
"We have a very nurturing, loving relationship," she said. "The way
I saw it, he was looking for me and what it is that he never got
from his own children. I looked at him as a father figure. I looked
at him as a mentor."
Stiviano said their relationship, while not sexual, transcended
personal and professional boundaries.
She said she earned a regular paycheck as an employee but had no
"set title."
"I was not only his assistant. I was his caretaker. I was his
mother, I was his secretary, I was his driver. I did everything for
this man in the last three years," she said.
According to Stiviano, it was her role as Sterling's secretary and a
personal life coach of sorts that led to the racially charged
scandal that has engulfed the Clippers and the National Basketball
Association.
Sterling came under fire last month after the website TMZ.com posted
an audio tape of him berating Stiviano for associating with black
people and urging her not to bring minorities with her to Clippers
games.
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Stiviano said the recording in question was one of many she made of
her private conversations with Sterling, all with his permission and
knowledge, as a kind of self-help therapy.
"The purpose of the recording was for him to learn things about
himself, for me to show him things about himself that sometimes he
didn't want to believe and accept," she said. "I would play those
things back to him just to remind him of how he acted or how
offensive he can be toward another person."
Sterling, in a separate CNN interview last week, denied that he knew
he was being recorded and said Stiviano had "baited" him into making
provocative remarks, which Stiviano denied.
She also denied again that she had anything to do with publicizing
the recording. She said it was either given or sold to TMZ by an
unnamed friend to whom she had, for unspecified reasons, entrusted a
copy of the tape.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Ken Wills)
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