A Staten Island dad secretly recorded “hundreds” of nude videos of his live-in nanny — then tried to break down her door as she cowered in fear after finding the hidden camera in her bedroom, she claims in a lawsuit.
The nanny was so terrified her employer might be armed with a gun that she jumped out a window to escape, according to court papers.
Kelly Andrade, 25, “immediately” reported father of four Michael Esposito to cops, who arrested him March 24 on a felony charge of unlawful surveillance.
The Colombian native said she underwent hundreds of hours of training before being hired by Cultural Care Au Pair and coming to America, where the company placed her in the $800,000 waterfront Tottenville home of Esposito, the owner of three LaRosa Grill franchises, and his wife, Danielle.
She was excited for the job, which gave her a chance to learn English and embrace a new culture, said Andrade, who spoke to The Post through an interpreter.
The Espositos gave her a bedroom to sleep in while she cared for their four young kids, but Andrade claims she kept catching Esposito in her room, fiddling with the smoke detector on the ceiling, which “was constantly being repositioned,” according to the Brooklyn Federal Court lawsuit.
Less than three weeks into the job, she finally examined the smoke detector, finding a camera inside with a memory card filled with “hundreds of recordings,” most capturing her “nude and/or dressing/undressing,” she charged in the legal filing.
But “within minutes” of her finding the device, Esposito showed up at the house, according to the nanny and the court papers.
“He seemed very nervous and he seemed very worried when he arrived to the house,” she recalled.
Andrade tried to pretend she was sleeping, in a bid to get Esposito to leave, but he was “banging on the door” and she entered “fight or flight mode,” she said.
“I need to get away,” she recounted.
She hurt her knees in the leap from her first-floor window, which was over an above-ground basement.
“I ran until I got far enough, where I felt safe enough to stop,” she said, adding she was completely unfamiliar with the area and had to look online with her phone for the nearest police station, where she reported the incident and handed over the memory card.
“I felt very afraid,” she recalled, “on top of what had just happened, now I don’t have a place to stay, I’m in a completely unknown country, I’m alone. I don’t have any money, I don’t know what I’m going to eat, I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow.”
Cultural Care Au Pair did nothing to help, charges Andrade, who said being secretly filmed and losing her employment left her “suicidal.”
“We’re alleging that Cultural Care had a responsibility for her safety,” said Andrade’s lawyer Zachary Holzberg.
Esposito was released on his own recognizance. The cameras were installed for security reasons, and not placed in a bedroom or dressing room, Michael Esposito’s lawyer claimed at the time of his arrest, according to the Staten Island Advance.
Andrade is suing the Espositos and Cultural Care for unspecified damages claiming discrimination and a hostile work environment, and calling Esposito’s behavior “extreme and outrageous.”
