New York- Yankee slugger Gary Sheffield hit a home run for his family as he gallantly supported his wife against a blackmailer who threatened to destroy her with humiliating sex tapes, the base ball hero’s mother- in-law told The Post yesterday.
“It’s hard for a mother-in- law to say good things about her son-in- law, but I must say, ‘God bless his soul,’ ” said Debbie Richards, the mom of Sheffield’s gos pel-singing wife, DeLeon. “He is the most awesome young man.”
Richards says she’s proud of how the Bronx Bomber worked to bring charges against the alleged blackmailer, who is accused of threatening to release two steamy videotapes purporting to show the now 28-year-old DeLeon in a three-way sex romp with R&B lothario R. Kelly and an unidentified woman.
“Can you imagine someone in his shoes? Most men would be whipped, buckled down, [saying] ‘I don’t want anybody to know.’ He said, ‘We’ll get through this. I don’t want anyone mistreating my family.’ ”
Richards admitted to The Post that her daughter had a relationship with allegedly kinky crooner Kelly. But she said the affair was so tumultuous it drove her into the arms of another man – Jesus Christ.
“Right after that episode she was saved,” she said of her daughter, who has been a gospel singer since she was a 3 years old.
According to a federal affidavit, self-styled Chicago minister Derrick Mosley demanded $20,000 for the tapes. But Sheffield’s business manager reported the demands to the FBI and later recorded Mosley making veiled threats.
In the documents, Mosley claims the tapes were made five years ago, which is long after DeLeon’s relationship with Kelly is supposed to have ended.
The feds said little about the tapes yesterday and it is unclear if any of Mosley’s claims about the tapes – including their existence – are true.
Sheffield and his wife met in New York in 1998, and were wed in February 1999.
Sheffield said in a written statement that his wife had a relationship with Kelly “over 10 years ago” and that he did not believe the tapes held anything that he did not know about.
Mosley was jailed on Monday and charged with attempting to defraud and extort.
Richards credits Sheffield’s support of his wife for the arrest.
“To see him step up and be in charge of his family, he is the man that every woman in the world would say: ‘I could look up to a man like that,’ ” she said.
She added that she does not believe her daughter did what the tapes are alleged to show.
“I know my daughter,” she said. “I know she is a good girl. Even when she was young, she was good. She’s been good all her life.
“We’re strong. When you know the Lord, he gives you peace in the middle of the storm.”
Mosley, meanwhile, is expected to be in court today for a bail hearing.
The Windy City activist, who acted as a spokesman for families of victims in a nightclub stampede that killed 21 people last year, told a Chicago television station last night he is innocent.
He claimed he was only trying to help the Sheffields by bringing the tapes’ existence to their attention.
“I know these charges are baseless, frivolous and without merit,” he told ABC affiliate WLS during a jail interview. “When all the facts come out, it’s going to be very clear I probably did more to try to help [Sheffield].
“My motives were altruistic.”
Mosley, a Chicago-area political gadfly, had inserted himself into major public issues and criticized other, better-known black leaders.
In a recent interview with the Illinois Leader conservative news Web site, he implied the Rev. Jesse Jackson was greedy – and said that he himself, on the other hand, would never prostitute himself for money.
“Well, for me – for one – it’s never about money,” Mosley said. “My track record is the only thing I stand on.
“But I can tell you this: My joy comes from the satisfaction of helping people with the issues they face. I am not pursuing money.”
Kelly has not denied having a relationship with the young gospel singer. He is facing charges for making other videos allegedly showing him having sex with an underage girl.