STATEN ISLAND — They said it was going on too long, so they decided to do something about it.
A bunch of women from the Park Hill section of Staten Island turned to Facebook recently, hoping to stop an alleged perv in his tracks.
“I believe he needs to be found and taken off the street, before someone actually gets hurt” said a 33-year-old woman named Ellie, who looks young enough to be a teenager.
She and other women told PIX11 the man’s been active several years, and he’s often been seen in a tan Jeep Cherokee, sometimes without license plates. They believe they’ve identified him as an active member in a local church, and they’re putting his name on Facebook, under his photo.
Ellie said she was walking home from work on Pierce Street, in the fall of 2015, when he summoned her toward his Jeep.
“He had a map in his hand,” Ellie recalled. “He wanted me to show him how to get to the Staten Island ferry.”
“As I got closer to the car, he pulled the map down, and he put his hand on his private part.”
Another woman, a mother of three, said the man in a tan Jeep used the same “ferry” line on her this year. She didn’t go close to him but said he was stalking her, from his vehicle, every day for months–when she stood at a bus stop at 2 pm to go get her children from school.
“I spoke to a friend who’s an officer,” Christina told PIX11, “who said if he didn’t physically do anything to you, we can’t stop him from driving around the block.”
Yet Ellie told PIX11 the strange driver is getting more aggressive now.
“My cousin, she was 7 months pregnant, and he actually grabbed her and tried to get her into his car.”
The women said they’ve notified the 122 Precinct at various times. In one instance, Ellie said she rode around with police looking for the tan Jeep, without success.
The fed up women are getting aggressive with their Facebook campaign, posting many times in recent weeks.
“You guys okay this is getting really f*****n scary now,” one Facebook member posted on June 20th. “I have a picture of him and two other girls have come forward.”
“I was stopped by him about 20 minutes ago right before Broadway and Richmond Terrace,” another poster wrote on June 25th. She mentioned the driver “was in a silver van but is known to drive other cars as well.”
“He’s Filipino, kind of stocky,” Ellie said.
The photos show a man in his early 30s with hair cropped close to his head or shaved, at times. The women identified the church he’s allegedly affiliated with, so we went there.
The pastor was away on vacation but a church member who knows the alleged perv defended him repeatedly.
“That Facebook is a big problem for a lot of people,” Andy Walters said. “They can smear you! They can ruin your name.”
“The car you’re describing, he doesn’t have,” Walters said. “He’s a very nice guy. He’s not someone who would do that.”
