New York- A married firefighter accused of joining a sordid firehouse orgy with an FDNY groupie broke his public silence yesterday, saying he made a “bad mistake,” in sleeping with the Staten Island divorcée.
“Every day is just another attempt to repair what I have done,” said nine-year veteran Tony “T.J.” DeLuca, the married father of two, at his Long Island home. “I’m a good person that made a bad mistake.”
“I’m aggressively trying to repair the hurt I have caused my wife and kids,” he said, his voice choking with remorse.
As he surveyed flood damage to the back of his Valley Stream house from a broken water line, he shrugged his shoulders and said: “I can’t catch a break, you know.”
DeLuca, 34, is the first of the three firefighters to speak publicly about the Aug. 20, 2004, incident in The Bronx. He and another firefighter, Anthony “Luigi” Loscuito, face departmental charges stemming from the basement orgy at the fire station dubbed “Animal House.”
Christian Waugh, 31, the third firefighter in the sex scandal, was fired in December for refusing to cooperate with authorities. Waugh declined comment yesterday.
Loscuito maintains he never had sex with the woman, and is assigned to an administrative post. DeLuca, who initially denied being involved, later admitted it.
Loscuito could not be reached for comment yesterday, but his uncle, Bernard Quattrucci, 50, called him “a good kid.”
“Whatever happened, happened, but hopefully everything will work out and he will continue to fight fires and help save people’s lives,” he said.
The salacious details of the sordid rendezvous – which was one of several scandals to rock the department last year – were spelled out in painstaking detail in a city Department of Investigation report put out Friday.
“They are watching porn on the computer, drinking and bringing the woman to have sex with her in the firehouse,” said DOI Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn, in spelling out the litany of scandals that have plagued the department, and making recommendations for how they can be resolved.
The details of the torrid Bronx tryst initially came to light when the 34-year-old woman told authorities the men had raped her. She later said the incident was consensual.
The woman has told authorities that she had a nervous breakdown after the Sept. 11 attack, and began having sex with firefighters and cops all over the city because she felt “bad for them.”
She first made contact with firefighters at the house through an Internet chat room, and began calling the house. Early in the morning of Aug. 20, she drove to the house and performed sex acts, one-by-one, on each of the three firefighters, while their supervisors were asleep.