New York EMS Suit Alleges Bizarre Harassment

August 17, 2007 -- Citing bizarre sexual and religious harassment, three former Long Island emergency medical service volunteers are suing the Medford volunteer ambulance company for $60 million, The Post has learned.

The suit, filed by Frank Somma, Roberta DeBono and Robert Faulkner on Monday, portrays the 80-person volunteer corps as a dysfunctional mess riddled with racism, nepotism and rampant financial wrongdoing.

Faulkner, 37, said that he was hounded by fellow EMS workers, including former chief Debbie Nava, for being gay after they learned he was busted for trespassing at a highway rest stop.

"It was just nonstop," he said. "It was vicious."

Faulkner said he was forced to watch a brutal station-house assault in 2005 in which a colleague, Jason Groff, was immobilized on a bunk with cellophane wrapping despite his screams.

The suit claims another member, Joseph Cipriano, dropped his pants and "put his buttocks into Jason Groff's face," according to the suit.

"It was a matter of inches," Faulkner said, adding that others watched the humiliation with one female member of the corps even snapping pictures.

DeBono, a Jehovah's witness, claims Nava and others objected to her religion and schemed to have her ousted.

"They didn't like anyone who wasn't just like them," said a source. "You heard the n-word, faggot, that kind of stuff all the time."

Somma, 47, said his objections to the boorish behavior made him a target. He said that racial slurs were part of the station culture, and that the lone black member of the department left after being heckled and harassed.

Faulkner said a Jewish recruit was hit with anti-Semitic slurs and a MySpace page affiliated with the department contained several anti-black racial slurs and anti-gay commentaries. The page has since been removed. Several sources took exception to Nava's recent appointment to the paid position of district manager. Nava, along with former Assistant Chief Robert Simpson, resigned from their posts two months ago to assume the $20,000 annual stipend posts.

A source said the department's board of directors was stacked with Nava's family and friends, including her husband and daughter, who made the appointment a foregone conclusion.

Nava dismissed the suit as sour grapes from disgruntled former workers who want revenge. She said DeBono was let go for an undisclosed violation and that Faulkner and Somma simply quit.

"There is really nothing to this," Nava said, adding that her friends and family recused themselves from her district manager appointment. "This has no basis in truth."

Republished with permission from The New York Post