A Long Island dad said his 14-year-old daughter was plied with drugs and sex trafficked by “unsavory characters” during a horrific month-long ordeal that ended on a boat docked at an Islip marina.
Frank Gervasi said his daughter Emmarae, who has struggled with drug abuse in the past and wore a monitoring ankle bracelet when she went missing on Dec. 9, was abused for several weeks by several creeps — including a 65-year-old man who planned to weigh anchor and ship her down south before her rescue.
“The person who picked her her up at my house, he removed the bracelet and, again, unsavory characters did what they did with her and she was already under the influence of drugs,” he told The Post. “She just started wandering aimlessly after that.
“The type of drugs they’re doing, there’s definitely a link between the drugs and trafficking,” he added. “Heavy drugs that they use [on] these girls to get addicted to traffic them.”
Emmarae disappeared from the family’s Patchogue home on Dec. 9, when she allegedly jumped into a car with someone she met online, her father and sources said.
The following day she was seen on surveillance video footage knocking on doors at a Bohemia motel, but disappeared again before she was found by her dad on a boat in Islip last week.
A local man, identified by Frank Gervasi as 65-year-old Francis Buckheit, has been charged in the case.
Police and prosecutors confirmed there was an arrest in the case but have not released the suspect’s identity. Court records show that Buckheit was arrested Friday and charged with kidnapping, rape and endangering a child and is behind held without bail.
“Obviously, there was an incident involving a minor and because she’s a minor I’m sort of precluded from saying a lot,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters Tuesday.
“Thankfully that child has been found and she’s safe,” Tierney said. “We’re going to continue to work with our county attorney’s office to make sure that she stays safe and we are going to work on that.”
Asked if others were involved in the teen’s abduction, he said that was part of the probe.
“I can tell you there were monumental efforts undertaken on behalf of both my office, the PD, the marshal service as well as a number of entities,” Tierney said. “I can tell you that if anyone thinks that they can engage in this type of conduct with a minor without ramifications, well, we’ll see what the grand jury says.”
Frank Gervasi said in a Facebook post last week that he was convinced his daughter was sex trafficked after she disappeared, prompting him to identify the teen publicly and launch a search for her.
He maintains there were others involved in his daughter’s nightmare, with a crew allegedly having held the girl at the hotel before she was picked up and forced onto the boat.
“From what I heard they were getting ready to move the boat,” he said. “My daughter, she overheard them.”
He said it wasn’t until he got an anonymous tip that he was able to show up and rescue the teen.
“She said, ‘Oh my God, dad! What are you doing here. And, ‘thank God.’ Basically, what she said and she gave me a big hug,” Gervasi said. “It was the greatest feeling in the world. I had called the cops on my way down there.
“I didn’t know what to expect when I went to the boat, whether there was somebody in there or not,” he said. “I got my daughter and then I cleared the entire boat and I realized there was nobody on there, but I realized he was returning shortly.”
Gervasi also conceded that he and his wife “have some porn videos I made in the past” which are posted on OnlyFans and kinky online sites, “that have nothing to do with [Emmarae]. Consenting adults.”
Meanwhile, he said Emmarae is safe, but will need time to recover.
“She’s doing good,” her father said. “She’s got a long road of recovery ahead of her, but, you know, that’s the way it goes with this kind of stuff.”
