Lissette Moreno is furious after her 17-year-old daughter was sexually harassed by two men living at an Ozone Park shelter for homeless men.
Photo by Paul Frangipane
A furious and fed-up Ozone Park mother rallied with community leaders Wednesday, Aug. 16, outside a shelter for homeless men where her 17-year-old daughter was allegedly sexually harassed by residents twice in the last month.
Lissette Moreno joined members of the Ozone Park Residents Block Association outside the Laurel Hall Shelter at 85-15 101st Ave. and told them about the first incident that happened to her daughter on July 18, as the teenager was walking home late at night after her shift at Russo’s on the Bay in Howard Beach.
“It’s just not safe here. You have people here with mental illnesses that shouldn’t be here and if they are here, they should be on medication, they should be supervised,” Moreno said. “This shelter needs to go. It’s too dangerous for our kids,”
She said she lives on 86th Street directly next door to the shelter which is located across 101st Avenue from Crossover Baptist Church a block away from Ampere Playground.
“Who puts a shelter here where there are schools, where there are children? I have my daughter, she comes home from work at late hours, why does she have to be harassed by these guys?” Moreno asked. “I’m just so tired.”
She wanted her daughter to speak at the rally, but she stayed away out of fear of being targeted by the residents of the shelter. Moreno said the men are out in front of the building each night drinking and smoking and blasting loud music.
“This is a men’s shelter, so when they’re outside they want to interact with women,” Moreno said.
After her daughter was allegedly sexually molested by two men in front of the shelter on July 18, Moreno found her daughter trembling as the men were telling the teen to add their numbers to her phone. Two days later, one of the same men followed her daughter up the block….
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