Missing Long Island girl's relative pleaded for help from Suffolk County before teen fled

Soon after the harrowing recovery of a 14-year-old sex trafficking victim on a yacht in Islip, Suffolk County officials launched a high-profile campaign to combat child sex trafficking called Operation Safe and Lasting Return.

"What good society turns a blind eye to missing children? What good society doesn’t go and try to protect its children?" Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine said at a February news conference.

But the stepgrandmother of the same girl had pleaded with county officials months before her December disappearance, even sending a three-page letter to Romaine, enumerating many issues the girl faced and the family's inability to get help. She also sent a follow-up email.

Part of the letter that DiDio sent to Romaine in Feb. 2024.

The girl’s family got no response from Romaine, said the stepgrandmother, Michelle DiDio.

"Our system is broken, there is no mental health help period, no one wants to go out of their box to even attempt to help," DiDio wrote to county leaders in February 2024.

Nine months later, the girl was gone, sparking a 25-day hunt for her return that blew up into an internet sensation and attracted attention from across the country. 

At the time DiDio wrote to county officials, police had arrested three men, Danny St. Louis, 44, of Bay Shore, Brandon Keezer, 22, of Shirley, and Keezer’s uncle, Daniel Keezer, 42, of Mastic Beach, for alleged sexual offenses involving the victim. The Keezers have pleaded guilty, and St. Louis is awaiting trial.

Newsday featured the girl’s case last month in "Unprotected," an investigation into the insidious nature of sex trafficking on Long Island and how a diffuse web of men and women — some drawn by chance, others driven by street drugs and opportunism — took advantage of the girl. The story also highlighted how the social services and legal systems so far have failed to protect the girl.

To date, 23 defendants have been charged in two states in connection with the girl. The crimes charged range from rape and kidnapping to drug charges. There have been six guilty pleas.

Newsday is not naming the girl because she is a victim of both alleged and adjudicated sex crimes.

DiDio also sent a copy of her email with the letter to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney and Suffolk County Probation Director Gerard J. Cook.

Cook confirmed he was emailed the letter. Tierney said he never received the letter. When he was told the email address to which she sent it, he said it was the wrong address. An online email directory confirmed she sent her email to an incorrect address.

Romaine declined repeated requests for an interview, but released a statement through his spokesman Michael Martino: "The county cannot comment on this case due to pending litigation and confidentiality laws."

Last March, the girl’s father, Frank Gervasi, filed a notice of claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, against the county, alleging his daughter’s constitutional rights were violated when she was allegedly sexually abused by an employee at the Sagamore Children’s Psychiatric Center, a state facility. 

After filing a notice of claim in New York, a plaintiff typically has a little more than a year to file the actual lawsuit, depending on the nature of the claim. Gervasi has not yet filed a lawsuit.

Letter offered to Suffolk County legislators

After not receiving a response to her letter, DiDio, on April 2, 2024, joined Jill Porter, a county probation officer at the time but now retired, at a public committee meeting of the Suffolk County Legislature to discuss human trafficking. With DiDio’s consent, Porter offered legislators a copy of the letter DiDio had emailed to Romaine, according to a video of the meeting. The meeting video does not show anyone accepting the letter.

Porter had been slated to speak for half an hour, but the committee chairwoman, Legis. Trish Bergin (R-East Islip), cut her off after 11 minutes. The committee then went into executive session, which is not open to the public, to protect the identity of the victim, according to the video.

Both the video and the minutes of that meeting were removed from the county website. They were restored to the website, with the victim’s name redacted, after a Newsday reporter filed a Freedom of Information Law request for them.

Bergin said she shut down the meeting after County Attorney Christopher Clayton directed her to do so because Porter had inadvertently mentioned the girl’s name. State law prohibits officials from revealing the identity of a victim of a sex crime.

Bergin said she was so focused on shutting down the meeting to protect the victim that she didn’t remember the letter. She said Porter could have submitted the letter to the clerk or passed around copies to the legislators.

"If I had received that letter, I absolutely would have responded," she said.

No one from the legislature followed up with DiDio after that meeting, DiDio said.

DiDio’s three-page, single-spaced letter to Romaine detailed the family’s heartache and obstacles in getting help for the troubled teenage girl.

'Behavior started getting much worse'

The family sought psychological counseling for the girl but couldn’t get a therapist to see her after being added to up to a dozen waitlists, the letter said.

The girl’s "behavior started getting much worse, she was abusive, angry, and didn’t know how to deal with the traumatic experience that she went through, after all she was only 12 years old, and a little girl. She was doing things that no 12-year-old little girl should be doing, but didn’t really know any better.

"She was continuing to connect with men in their 40s who to me are pedophiles and sex traffickers drugging her and using her for sex. She ran away numerous times, the SCPD was called each and every time, thankfully she was found alive, but abused sexually by these men who to this day are still out on our streets," the letter said.

Gervasi and his wife had "spent the past 2 years in Hell, no sleep, financially broken and spiritually broken as they have done everything imaginable to try to help this little girl," the letter said.

Gervasi declined to comment. His wife is DiDio's daughter.

The girl was assigned to virtual learning by the school district. DiDio’s letter said the girl was getting only one hour a day of virtual education "IF they had a teacher available."

Frustrated, DiDio called the office of state Sen. Dean Murray. Penny Hines, his chief of staff, gave her Porter’s number. Hines declined to comment.

Porter was the first county official to help her daughter, DiDio’s letter said. "This woman is amazing. I will be forever grateful to her for how much she has done in the three weeks we have had contact with her. We have been able to sleep for the first time in over two years knowing that [the girl] is safe and protected."

DiDio’s relief would be short-lived.

The family sent her to a treatment center in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a state known for its innovative substance abuse treatment facilities. DiDio also thought it would be good for the girl to be away from bad influences in New York.

It didn’t work out as the family had hoped. The girl ran away. St. Cloud police found her within three days, and four men were charged with criminal sexual conduct with her. Authorities kept the girl in a detention center in Minnesota as the family scrambled to set up services for her return home.

She returned home last fall; and for a few months, life was more settled.

Then, on Dec. 9, the girl contacted 35-year-old Alton Harrell through Snapchat, and he picked her up, according to police and court records. She went missing for nearly a month. Her father posted daily on social media about his frantic efforts to find her before locating her on a yacht in an Islip marina.

"I hope you can prevent other families from this nightmare that we have been living for over two years," DiDio wrote before the girl's disappearance. "It's a very sad story for a little girl to endure."