Packed House Summer Home To Counselors

Two directors at an East Hampton summer camp were charged with multiple safety and crowding violations on Aug. 5 after the town executed a search warrant of a staff house at 17 Ocean Boulevard in East Hampton.

East Hampton Town officials said in a statement that the house was being occupied by 25 counselors working at the Hampton Country Day Camp, which is on Buckskill Road in East Hampton. The house is owned by the same Glen Cove limited liability corporation that owns the camp.

David S. Skolnick, 32, of Plainview and Doris E. Rosen, 60, of Jericho were each charged with 61 alleged violations, including failure to obtain building permits, missing smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, blocking fire egress from rooms, failure to maintain and enclose a swimming pool, and keeping garbage within the residence.

The search warrant was executed by the town Ordinance Enforcement Department, town police, and the fire marshal’s office.

An 18-year-old former counselor at Hampton Country Day Camp who stayed in the Ocean Boulevard house that was raided last week described on Monday the conditions she lived in.

Reina Humphrey, who asked that her hometown not be revealed, had flown from the West Coast in late June. “When we arrived, we were immediately brought to the camp,” she said. The teens were promised that they would have “the time of your life.” They were told, she said, that they “were the cream of the crop.”

She was assigned to work with 3-year-olds and enjoyed her days with the youngsters at the camp, where she said the conditions were superb. “It is a really good atmosphere at the camp.” It was the counselors’ living conditions on Ocean Boulevard, however, that drove her to fly back home after four weeks.

“I wasn’t in the worst house. Buckskill was the worst. It had mold,” she had been told of the house at 209 Buckskill Road, which is also owned by the camp, and also had a visit from inspectors last week. According to Dave Betts, the town’s director for public safety, by the time inspectors arrived at that house last Thursday, it, as well as another owned by the camp at 346 Three Mile Harbor Road, was being brought into compliance with the town code.

The town has moved for a preliminary injunction against the camp in State Supreme Court. A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 25.

According to Mr. Betts, the investigation into the houses began when a diligent code enforcement officer noticed from the street that the property lacked a house number, which is required by the town in case of emergencies. That led to checking what appeared to be an unsecured pool, which led to interviewing occupants, which led to seeking the search warrant.

Ms. Humphrey described what she found when she arrived at the Ocean Boulevard house in mid-June. “It was like 20 college students had lived there, trashed it, and left,” she said. “It was clearly not taken care of, at all.” And that was at the beginning of the season.

“About 16 guys,” she said, were all put in one room. The girls were split up into smaller rooms, sleeping on bunk beds. She estimated the number of residents in the house at about 27 or 28, counting herself. With no extra room for their things, they lived out of their suitcases and trunks. “It was so packed,” she said, that it was hard to navigate through the house without stumbling.

Unsupervised, she said the atmosphere was “a huge party environment.” There was “constant drinking in the house.” When the residents, many of whom were under 21, weren’t partying there, they were hitting the clubs, particularly in Montauk.

It was not unusual for her housemates to bring strangers back after clubbing. In the mornings, she said, many of the counselors would joke about how hung over they were.

Beyond the overcrowding, Ms. Humphrey was frightened by the lack of smoke detectors. She described one night when several of her housemates returned from a club, and cooked something on the stove. “They were leaving to go to bed. The stove was still on.” Ms. Humphrey turned it off.

One thing that helped her get through was her workout regime at CrossFit Hamptons II on Pantigo Road. There, she was befriended by a couple of adults, Nicola Clayton and Shawn Studer, a trainer.

“They did not have a safe haven in place for their wards to go to,” Ms. Clayton said yesterday about the camp and its management.

Finally, on July 13, Ms. Humphrey had had enough. “I left in the middle of the night,” she said. She doubted her housemates noticed her leaving. A group was “drinking and having sex downstairs.”

She took a taxi to her gym on Pantigo Road, left a note on the door for her friends, and ended up at the train station in East Hampton, to begin her long trip home. “I left because I felt unsafe,” she said.

She was being paid, she said, about $100 a week, every two weeks, and was to be paid the remainder of her summer salary at the end of the season.

Camp officials have not responded to requests for comment on the allegations.

According to the camp’s website, Mr. Skolnick, a Cornell University graduate, has worked for the TLC family of camps for many years, becoming the East Hampton camp’s director in 2010. Ms. Rosen was also made a director in 2010. They are due in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Monday to answer the charges.

Jay Jacobs, the president of the TLC camps, was not charged, according to the town.

In the town’s statement after the raid, it said that most of the house had been altered without the required building permits or inspections, making for a dangerous living situation. The four-bedroom house had eight bedrooms, all with bunk beds. Among the charges leveled against Mr. Skolnick and Ms. Rosen was that the house had been improperly converted to a dormitory and that exit windows had been blocked by air conditioners. There were also five more vehicles observed on the property than allowed for a rented property, the town said.