Following a tip that his daughter was on a boat in an Islip marina, a Long Island father made good on his promise to retrieve his missing child and return her to safety.
Friday night's recovery of Emmarae ("Emma") Gervasi, 14, of Patchogue, brings resolution to a nearly month-long saga, but also invites more inquiries: who were her captors?
As previously reported by other outlets, Emma left her Terrel Street home on the evening of Dec. 9th. She had last been seen at around 5 p.m. that day, leaving out the front door barefoot and without a jacket.
Emma had told her mom she was heading to retrieve something from the car in the driveway. Instead, she entered a blue Honda that had pulled up; security footage confirming this does not conclude if she did so willingly, or if she was pulled into the car. It is her father Frank Gervasi’s understanding that Emma "went off" with a man she met online, but left him soon thereafter for a “random” 65-year-old man,” according to The New York Post.
Security cameras next captured Emma knocking on motel doors in Bohemia the following day. It would be several weeks into a virtually explosive search party before she would resurface.
While providing updates during his collaborative pursuit alongside officials from Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney’s offices, the Gervasi patriarch was candid about his daughters' troubled history. This included mentions of a penchant for running away and being susceptible to the manipulative nature of shady adult influences.
Surely a distressing holiday season for the Gervasi, the prolific online interest and prayers sent their way thanks to local and greater media exposure most definitely led to the breakthrough.
Mass intrigue in the case also inspired faulty leads, conspiratorial misdirection, red herrings and so forth. Emma Gervasi is reportedly a witness in two upcoming trials, but neither law officials nor her father have commented on this in the wake of her re-emergence.
Emma’s father did take to his Facebook account on Sat., Jan. 4th to thank all those within the community who shared her photo on social media and plastered missing person flyers around town. Without their efforts, he believes, Emma would not have been found.
“The good thing is that my nightmare is over,” Frank said. “However, other parents’ nightmares are still existing. Their children are still missing.”
After reporting that Emma is doing well and recovering in a facility, Frank revealed that, as he suspected, Emma indeed was being held against her will—and not allowed to leave the boat she was ultimately discovered upon sans an escort.
“She was being forced to do things that a 14-year-old shouldn’t have to do,” Frank said. “So I do believe this is sex trafficking, and it’s being looked into.”
He continued: “Anytime a kid is being held against their will or forced to do things that they don’t want to do, whether it’s for addiction purposes or whatever it is, that’s a form of sex trafficking. They get these girls, they get them hooked on drugs, and then they make them do stuff for it.”
While Suffolk authorities continue to plow ahead at confronting and subsequently dismantling pop-out outfits of a globally-encompassing sex crime industry that, as Gervasi correctly surmised, has become a “very big problem on Long Island,” the relieved parent cautions others to keep an eye on their children.
“These people are predators," he said, "and they will stop at nothing to get to your kid."