By Barry Paddock and Rocco Parascandola
New York Daily News
March 23, 2011
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/03/23/2011-03-23_francesco_zaffuto_former_counselor_at_staten_island_summer_camp_faces_sexabuse_c.html
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| 19-year-old camp counselor, Francesco Zaffuto, is led out of the Staten Island DA's office Wednesday. |
A former counselor at a Staten Island summer camp was charged Wednesday with sexually abusing an autistic boy and taking pictures of the crime, officials said.
Francesco Zaffuto, 19, forced the then-8-year-old boy - who can't speak - to perform sex acts in a camp bathroom over several days in 2008, Staten Island prosecutors said.
Zaffuto documented the assaults by snapping 35 pictures on an iPhone, authorities said.
"He took trophy photos of these acts and kept them on his personal computer for two-and-a-half years," said Staten Island assistant district attorney Yolanda Rudich.
The smartphone images each had a "Geotag," giving investigators a time and location for each picture taken, said Lt. Dennis Lane, commanding officer of the NYPD's computer crimes squad.
"We knew whoever took these pictures, took them at this location \[the summer camp\]," he said.
Lane said many of the obscene images obtained photographed the perpetrator from the waist down, wearing only sneakers.
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| Zaffuto is accused of sexually abusing an autistic boy at the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin at Mount Loretto summer camp. |
Zaffuto preyed on his victim during a program after the regular day ended at the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin at Mount Loretto summer camp. There is less supervision at that time, other campers' parents said.
"It's very disturbing to us. Our kids are not protected," said Diane Peruggia, who attended Zaffuto's arraignment yesterday.
Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan said he was "sickened" by the allegations.
"There is nothing that rattles a community's sense of well being more than an act of violence and cruel exploitation against its most innocent and vulnerable members," he said.
Zaffuto's lawyer, Leo Duvall, said his client is not visible in the photos and that it is unclear that he committed the abuse.
But Lane said a pair of sneakers confiscated from Zaffuto's home were identical to the ones worn by the pervert in the photographs.
"There was a scruff mark that matched almost perfectly," he said.
Zaffuto graduated from St. Joseph-by-the-Sea High School, which recommended him for the job, prosecutors said. He worked at the camp for only one summer.
Duvall said Zaffuto suffers from depression and dropped out of Rutgers University in December. Zaffuto's father sat in the back row of the courtroom and declined to comment.
Zaffuto was hit with 104 counts of sexual abuse and child porn charges and faces up to 75 years in prison if convicted. He was held on $750,000 bail.
Zaffuto was originally arrested in late January for possession of child pornography when cops discovered a trove of vile images on his computer.
Among them were pictures of Zaffuto abusing the child while he worked at the camp in August 2008, prosecutors said.
Investigators learned of Zaffuto's heinous collection after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children informed the NYPD that Zaffuto had uploaded child porn onto a website.
Those images were not of the boy he is charged with abusing.
The camp is located on Hylan Blvd. in the Mount Loretto area. The program, which is primarily for children with autism, runs for 10 days every August.
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