Ivie Clay

ST. LOUIS — U.S. Rep. Lacy Clay’s wife issued a stinging statement today, attacking the congressman for not telling her — or their children — about his divorce filing before it was reported in the media.

She says the congressman still has not discussed the split with his son and daughter since filing for divorce last week.

Ivie Clay, in a statement issued through her attorney, also criticized Circuit Court Clerk Mariano V. Favazza, whose conversation with Rep. Clay on Monday preceded a motion from the congressman to seal the case.

“I and my children are devastated and embarrassed that my husband let us find out from the children’s friends and the media that he had filed for divorce, and mostly that he still has not contacted our children,” Ivie Clay said. “I would have wanted to prepare the children.”

Ivie Clay, who works at the St. Louis Development Corp., a city agency, married Lacy Clay in 1992, when he was a Missouri state senator.

“I have been a loving, supportive wife throughout our 17-year marriage,” Ivie Clay said. “I have raised the children and held down the fort so that my husband could work 4 days a week, first in Jefferson City and now in Washington, DC, travel overseas, and do everything required to fulfill the duties of his elected office – all while working my own full-time job.”

In the statement, Ivie’s lawyer, Susan M. Hais, criticized Favazza for contacting the congressman — and not Ivie or her legal counsel — in what he said was an attempt to make sure that a motion to seal the case had not been filed.

At the time, no request to close the case existed. However, one was filed and granted on the congressman’s behalf Monday afternoon, hours after a reporter from the Post-Dispatch asked to see it. Favazza confirmed that he told Rep. Clay that a reporter was asking to see the case file.

Hais said the “file was sealed–not through the procedure mandated by the case law and rules of court of this state–but by the intercession of the Circuit Clerk of the City, taking it upon himself to affirmatively contact one party in this case–Mr. Clay’s attorney–to warn him and coach him, apparently, concerning the sealing of the file, in an improper ex parte manner, to the detriment of Mrs. Clay, the press, and the public.”

Hais also suggested that the political influence of Clay, who took over the Congressional seat from his father in 2001, could make it impossible to have a fair hearing in St. Louis courts.

Said Hais: “Is it conceivable to try a case in a Circuit where at least half of the Judges have been appointed to the bench in part or whole because of the ‘good offices’ of the Petitioner Congressman?”

View the entire statement from Ivie Clay here.

A spokesman for Rep. Clay has declined comment, calling the divorce a “private family matter.”