WASHINGTON — Debbie Clemens testified today that her husband was not present when she received a shot of human growth hormone from Roger Clemens’ strength coach — testimony that contradicts the star pitcher’s chief accuser in the perjury trial.

But on cross-examination by the prosecution, she said of her husband’s view of HGH, “I don’t think he thought it was bad.” She added, “It wasn’t like doing heroin.”

When a prosecutor asked if Clemens was mad when she told him about the HGH shot, she testified that his attitude was more that she wasn’t “old enough yet” and didn’t need it: “Why did you think you needed to do that?”

“I didn’t think this was a bad thing,” Debbie Clemens said. “And I still don’t.”

Debbie Clemens said she got the idea to take HGH from a front-page USA Today story in 2000 headlined, “Boomers believe they’ve found a fountain of youth in a syringe.”

“A lot of people in Hollywood were doing it, and it was a youth drug,” she said under questioning from Rusty Hardin, a lawyer for both Roger and Debbie Clemens. She said the newspaper story described it as a “youth drug, healthy and good.” But the story also said that injecting HGH “is a practice that many doctors consider highly risky.”