ATLANTIC CITY — Rachel Neufeld Del Rossi had simply turned 15 in 1979 when she says she was sexually assaulted by two Margate lifeguards throughout a summer time she was working as a mom’s helper on the Argyle Avenue seaside.
The contact with one in every of them, Steven Chasens, then 24 and now an acupuncturist in Coral Gables, Fla., continued for years, she alleged in a lawsuit filed in Atlantic County.
Del Rossi, now 61, alleged that she was groomed by Chasens, coerced to cross state strains to Florida, and given medication and aircraft tickets, all of which Chasens denied. Del Rossi stated she suffered excessive emotional and bodily misery.
This week, the civil lawsuit she filed in 2021 got here to a jury trial in an Atlantic Metropolis courtroom about 5 miles from the seaside in Margate the place the 2 met, earlier than Decide Ralph Paolone.
On Friday, the jury returned a verdict towards Chasens, discovering him responsible for his actions towards an underage Del Rossi, and awarded her $3 million in compensatory and punitive damages, in response to her legal professional, Jeff Fritz.
“They discovered legal responsibility on assault and battery, human trafficking and intentional infliction of emotional misery,” Fritz stated.
Chasens’ legal professional, Robert Agre, declined to remark.
The town of Margate, initially named as a defendant within the lawsuit for allegedly failing to correctly practice and supervise its lifeguards, settled in February and agreed to pay Del Rossi $485,000, in response to Fritz. The town didn’t admit culpability, he stated.
The opposite lifeguard, Brendan Bradley, whom Del Rossi accused of sexually assaulting her contained in the Argyle Avenue lifeguard shack, was additionally named within the lawsuit. He denied the accusations in courtroom paperwork and settled in February for an undisclosed quantity, in response to courtroom paperwork.
Del Rossi by no means reported the assaults to police and testified that she solely thought-about the impropriety of the contact, and its impact on her, starting in her 30s.
Del Rossi was capable of deliver a civil case below the 2019 New Jersey Child Victims Act, which permitted an individual who alleged accidents as a result of a sexual assault to file a lawsuit inside a two-year time interval outlined below the regulation.
The trial was the primary time Del Rossi, now a part-time Talbots employee in Cherry Hill, had seen Chasens, 70, since 1983. It was an emotional second for the girl who stated her teenaged contact with the lifeguard affected her for the remainder of her life.
“The primary time I noticed him, after all, I misplaced it,” she stated throughout a break earlier than the trial’s opening statements Monday. “However you understand it’s fascinating as a result of in my thoughts, he was that younger man. And now this man.”
She has been resolute on this near-lifelong quest.
“I really feel this is a chance for me to lastly get justice like it is a very long time coming,” she stated.
Chasens denied any inappropriate contact and stated in courtroom paperwork he doesn’t even keep in mind if he was a lifeguard after the summer time of 1979. Agre, his legal professional, stated he acknowledged having intercourse with Del Rossi when she was 17. Bradley, the opposite lifeguard, denied assaulting her and testified that he doesn’t keep in mind Del Rossi.
“It doesn’t matter what, it’s a win for her, due to the braveness it has taken,” stated her pal, Alyson Bunker.
The lawsuit additionally accuses Chasens of violating New Jersey’s human trafficking statue, which he denies.
Fritz, Del Rossi’s legal professional, informed the jury the case concerned “an grownup sexual predator who tried to prey” on her, and the lawsuit was her try to carry him accountable in any case this time.
Del Rossi testified Chasens kissed her on the seaside the day she met him and Bradley, and that she first had sexual activity with him within the residence of the individuals she was working for and three to 5 different occasions that summer time.
Fritz confirmed the jury letters Chasens despatched to Del Rossi expressing his love. He attended her senior promenade, when she was 17 and he was 27. It wasn’t till she was in her 30s that Del Rossi started reassessing these years, Del Rossi stated.
Agre informed the jury in opening statements that Chasens acknowledged having a consensual sexual relationship with Del Rossi when she was 17. However he denied any inappropriate contact along with her when she was 15 or 16.
Agre famous that Del Rossi’s household was conscious of the connection, and argued that basic “grooming” concerned concealment. Chasens visited Del Rossi at her mom’s residence, and even despatched the household flowers, in response to testimony.
Del Rossi stated within the interview that the expertise has affected her in “unbelievable methods: relationships, belief points, PTSD, anxiousness, simply you understand, simply the issues that he did to me. that simply hang-out me constantly.”
“I’ve been by way of a lot remedy three therapy facilities, simply many 12 step conferences,” she stated, “simply to take care of the aftermath of his grooming and his abuse simply has been a lifelong battle for me.”
In courtroom paperwork, Chasens denied assaulting Del Rossi
and buying aircraft tickets and stated he didn’t keep in mind how he met her. He denied having any inappropriate contact along with her whereas employed as a Margate lifeguard. Fritz confirmed a photograph of the 2 of them within the Cayman Islands, and one other on the Diplomat Lodge in Hollywood, Fla. when Del Rossi was 17.
On the witness stand, Del Rossi sobbed as she spoke of the continuous triggers and the impression on her life, on her means to be intimate along with her husband, of her continued remedy and medicine for anxiousness and melancholy, on the “the madness of the best way that it affected me in so some ways.”
She stated she returned to the Argyle seaside in 2011.
“I wished to see,” she stated. “I drove there. I dropped and I sobbed. And I sobbed and I sobbed. What would my life have been like if he selected someone else?”
