各位好，请教一下
在论坛上看到有人贴出一则新闻，想探讨里面的say为何用现在式：
The tourists at the centre of a storm after leaving rubbish on Takapuna Beach
and abusing a local woman have spoken exclusively to the Herald.
Among their counter-claims, they say one of their children was assaulted at
the beach and denied fleeing restaurants without paying for their meals.

因为jutfrank觉得say现在式就ok了啊…所以他才觉得稍后的deny可以维持现在式就好现在式的say是先出现的，所以是现在式要不要改，而不是过去式要不要改