Girl Sues Cops Over Sex Tape "Screening"

MAY 27--A teenage girl claims that Westchester County cops last year confiscated a sex tape of hers during the execution of a search warrant and then showed the X-rated video to law enforcement colleagues for their amusement and "sexual gratification." According to a federal lawsuit, a copy of which you'll find here, the tape showed the New York girl "at age fifteen, naked and engaging in oral sex and vaginal intercourse."

The girl, now 17 and identified as "Jane Doe" in the May 21 U.S. District Court complaint, charges that a trio of Harrison Police Department officers screened the video after it was retrieved from the bedroom of Joseph Porto, the girl's boyfriend (a law enforcement source told TSG that police examined statutory rape charges, but could not positively identify the male in the video, though they suspected it was Porto).

The girl was present in Porto's home while the residence was being searched last May following his arrest on a felony marijuana distribution charge. The girl claims that police watched the video in her presence "while laughing," and that they put a camcorder in her face and "mockingly" asked her questions about the explicit video as it played.

She also alleges that a Harrison detective told her, "I should beat your ass for this. I hope your parents beat your ass." The teenager claims that the investigator also retrieved anal beads from a bedroom, put them in her face, and asked, "What do you do with these--put them in your mouth?"

The girl charges that cops subsequently played the video "sufficiently close to the cell in which the boyfriend was incarcerated so that he could hear the audio component of the video," and that they laughed about the video and made "repeated references by name to his girlfriend as she was depicted on the video."

She also contends that the Harrison officers "thereafter played the video for other members of the department to watch for their amusement, sexual gratification, and to further degrade Plaintiff." Among other causes of action, the girl's lawsuit, which does not specify monetary damages, claims that her privacy has been violated and she was falsely imprisoned.

Captain Anthony Marraccini said that he and his two codefendants deny all of the girl's "outlandish claims." Her lawyer, Jonathan Lovett, did not return a TSG phone message about the lawsuit. (8 pages)