A “petrified” au pair won $2.78 million in court after learning her fast-food mogul boss had secretly recorded her “hundreds” of times in various stages of undress using a hidden camera in her bedroom.
La Rosa Grill franchisee Michael Esposito, 35, hid the camera in a smoke detector to record 25-year-old Colombian native Kelly Andrade, who he hired from a placement firm to care for his four young children, according to a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
In 2021, Esposito was arrested and charged with unlawful surveillance, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, but according to the lawsuit, the Staten Island district attorney and a judge allowed the man to forego prison time with two years of probation and counseling.
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Andrade told the New York Post that she was outraged when Esposito evaded jail time and that the payout in court was insufficient after her ordeal.
“It’s not enough for the whole situation I’ve been through these three years. It’s not enough,” she tearfully told the outlet. “I was angry because the damage that he caused me is irreversible.”
After she underwent hundreds of hours of training, Cultural Care Au Pair placed Andrade with Esposito in 2021. The man’s family was living at his in-laws’ waterfront home in Tottenville, Staten Island while their $2.3 million mansion was being renovated nearby.
Quickly after the placement, the au pair said she kept catching Esposito fiddling with the smoke detector in her bedroom, which was allegedly “constantly being repositioned.”
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After less than three weeks with the family, Andrade was overcome by curiosity and examined the smoke detector, according to the lawsuit. Inside, she found a camera, and on its memory card were “hundreds of recordings” capturing her “nude and/or dressing/undressing,” according to the lawsuit.
Within minutes of her discovery, Andrade told the Post, Esposito returned to the house.
“He seemed very nervous, and he seemed very worried when he arrived to the house,” she told the outlet.
Andrade told the Post that she pretended to be asleep in a bid to make Esposito leave, but as he banged on the door, she said she entered “fight or flight mode.”
She leaped out of her first-floor window, injuring her knee in the process, and “slept on the street in a bush” that evening, her lawyer told the outlet.
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Esposito was arrested on March 24, 2021 after Andrade went to the police. However, in April 2022, Esposito was able to withdraw his felony plea and pleaded down to the unlawful misdemeanor of attempted unlawful surveillance, a misdemeanor, after completing a year of counseling, the State Island district attorney’s office told the outlet.
“Despite him doing this, he got to go home to his wife and children in their mansion and [Andrade is] sleeping on the street,” Andrade’s lawyer Zack Holzberg told the Post. “There was no consequence [for Esposito]… [he] got probation… a slap on the wrist.”
On Sept. 12, a jury ruled that Esposito must pay Andrade $2 million in damages, in addition to $780,000 that he and his wife must pay to Andrade for emotional distress, according to court documents reviewed by Fox News Digital.
Andrade, who now lives in New Jersey with her husband of two years, said it “wasn’t easy” for her to sit in a courtroom with Esposito, who never took the stand in the four-week civil trial.
“It was a very difficult time for me,” she said. “It brings back memories that I’m trying to forget.”
Andrade said she spoke out “to encourage many au pairs and also immigrants who have been the victims of abuse.”
“Don’t keep quiet,” she told the Post. “Don’t be afraid to report your aggressor.”
Fox News Digital could not reach Holzberg or an attorney representing Esposito at press time.
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