Ford feels 'set up' by drug tape
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/c...nists/sueann_levy/2010/06/16/pf-14417601.html
City hall’s “enfant terrible” — mayoralty candidate Rob Ford — insists he only was trying to help someone in trouble when he offered to try to find an HIV-positive man some OxyContin on the street.
“I personally feel sorry for him ... he needs help... he needs something,” Ford said Wednesday.
The highly questionable offer comes out in a 52-minute conversation Ford had with Dieter Doneit-Henderson on the evening of June 4 — a tape of which was obtained by the Toronto Sun.
In it, the 30-year-old gay married man admits to having taken 14 mg of OxyContin, a powerful and addictive pain killer, and 150 mg of Fentynal a day to deal with the pain of a fractured rib and fibromyalgia.
After revealing to Ford that the last doctor he had gone to refused to give him more OxyContin, the councillor at first suggests he get it on the street.
Later in the conversation Doneit-Henderson asks if Ford himself can find him some OxyContin, and Ford responds more than once that he’ll try, asking how much it goes for on the street.
“Why don’t you go on the street and score it?” Ford says in the tape.
When the man suggests he needs only two or three or four of the pills to “kill the pain,” Ford asks him to leave it with him and he’ll “ask people on the street” to see what he can do.
At one point, Doneit-Henderson presses Ford for help.
“Can you find OyxContin for me, Rob?”
Ford says “Huh?” and Doneit-Henderson repeats himself.
“Can you find OxyContin so I can get on the medication, so I can ...”
Ford interupts. “I’ll try buddy, I’ll try ...”
As Doneit-Henderson continues to press, Ford suggests he’ll go to his doctor and ask “people on the street to see what’s going on ...”
“Leave this with me ... I have no idea. I don’t know any drug dealers at all,” he said. “I’ll bet my life I won’t be able to help you out ... because I’ve never done this kind of s--t.”
Wednesday, Ford told the Sun he never intended to actually purchase drugs for Doneit-Henderson.
“I feel set up,” he said, suggesting someone’s out to get him because he’s in first place in the most recent polls. “I went above and beyond to try to help him.”
Ford said he was introduced to the man on May 10 by a Toronto Star reporter.
The introduction followed a mayoralty debate in early May in which opponent George Smitherman attacked the outspoken Etobicoke councillor for his 2006 comments in which he contended only gay men and drug abusers get AIDs.
Ford contacted MPP Donna Cansfield for her help with finding the man a doctor.
He said he told the man whatever he wanted to hear in the 52-minute conversation because it started to concern him that Doneit-Henderson knew where he lived with his young family and was starting to become more threatening.
Ford said he was “playing along” and tried to get him off the phone five or six times.
“Just not to upset him I would have said anything,” he said. “I don’t know any drug dealers ... I don’t even know what this s--t — that what’s I call drugs — this s--t is.
“I just basically said what he wanted to hear,” Ford said, insisting he’s not into the drug scene and would never score drugs.
He added that he didn’t know what OxyContin was until it was explained to him.
Ford said he had an inkling the man was taping the conversation — something that was confirmed in a June 9 e-mail to Doug Ford from Dieter’s husband, Colville, and on which the Star reporter is copied.
An assistant in Cansfield’s office said they tried to work with Doneit-Henderson to find a doctor but it became a problem because he has had 10 doctors since he moved to Toronto from Ottawa on March 15.
“We eventually got some threatening e-mails ... we didn’t know where to go next,” the assistant said.
Reached Wednesday evening, Doneit-Henderson said he doesn’t know how he could be threatening when he can “barely bend over to take out the garbage.” Nevertheless, he conceded he had given the tape of the June 4 phone call to the Star reporter, X-tra and Fab magazines because he was “disappointed” in Ford and wanted to make sure Ford kept his promise to find him a doctor.
He said he has been tweeting messages on Twitter alleging Ford is a “wife abuser.”
Doneit-Henderson denied he set up Ford or intended to ruin his reputation.
“I have no interest in giving Rob Ford a bad name,” he said.
“In my heart I want to support this man because of his fiscal policies and because of his stance on various issues we see eye-to-eye on,” referring to councillor Kyle Rae’s 11th-hour spending on a party and a junket.
Ford said he felt he had to go overboard to help Doneit-Henderson because the councillor has been accused of being homophobic.
“They accuse me all the time of not liking gays ... which I do,” he said. “I really felt sorry for this guy and I still do.
“But I did whatever I could do for him ... I don’t know what else I can do for him.”
He said those who have heard the tape say he’s just “too nice” and has to stop returning all of his phone calls personally.
sue-ann.levy@sunmedia.ca