STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A former Sanitation police officer and ex-Navy Sea Cadets youth instructor faces prison time after admitting to sexually molesting two teenage girls in their restricted barracks during a weekend Cadets outing.
Salvatore Emma, 45, of the 400 block of Arden Avenue, in Arden Heights, pleaded guilty to first-degree course of sexual conduct, the top count against him in a multicount indictment filed in July last year, after he was arrested on charges he sexually abused a 17-year-old girl beginning in 2006, and a 14-year-old girl for more than a year.
Under the deal, prosecutors recommended that Emma serve five years in prison, five years of post-release supervision, and register as a sex offender upon his release.
He is due to return May 28 to state Supreme Court, St. George, for sentencing in front of Justice Robert J. Collini.
Emma’s attorney, Thomas Reilly, declined comment today.
Emma, a former Department of Sanitation police officer, served as an instructor and public affairs officer for Staten Island’s division of the national Navy Sea Cadets program, which teaches teenagers 13 to 17 about the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Merchant Marine.
Lt. James Armstrong, former commanding officer of the Island’s NSCC Capodanno Division, said today that Emma was "dismissed immediately" from the Sea Cadets’ program after the charges came to light last year.
Police and sources close to the program said Emma took advantage of an April weekend training outing in Cape May, N.J., using his authority to get close to the teen victims when they were housed in barracks barred to adults of the opposite sex.
During the "drill weekend" at the Coast Guard base in Cape May, sources said a woman instructor walked in on Emma and two girls sitting on a bed in their room "behind a closed door" in the female barracks, which were off-limits to adults and teen cadet males.
When the instructor asked Emma to leave, he reportedly refused at first, then left 10 minutes later after the woman repeatedly told him he wasn’t allowed in the room.
A police source said the Cape May drill weekend’s commanding officer later posted himself in front of the female barracks "because [Emma] would walk in and videotape everybody."
Parents and Emma’s fellow NSCC instructors complained numerous times to program officials about the Cape May and other alleged incidents, sources said. "These children were at risk," one parent said last year. "This man was a pig, there was always something creepy about him."
Due to city budget cuts, Emma had been reassigned from his post as a Sanitation police officer to a route working out of the Sanitation garage on West Service Road near the West Shore Expressway. A Sanitation spokesman said today that Emma was dismissed from his job in November "due to the charges."