Firefighter loses job after refusing to prove his sexuality by sleeping with a stripper
Michael Troina was subjected to a number hazing rituals
By Steve Brown
A firefighter was told to have sex with a stripper to prove he wasn’t gay.
Michael Troina, a former FDNY employee, claimed members of a New York City firefighting crew subjected him a number of “hazing rituals”, according to an ongoing lawsuit.
After trying to shrug it off as being the new guy, he started to suffer from mental and emotional stress after the abuse continued, the New York Post reported.
The lawsuit said his colleagues smeared peanut butter on his car and superimposed his face on a picture of a crying baby.
Troina claimed he was “singled out time and time again on account of his race and national origin as a Hispanic American male as well as perceived homosexuality”.
He was also allegedly “threatened with physical violence if he dared to report any incident of battery, harassment or discrimination”.
He went on to say that his colleagues would “coerce” him to go to strip club and encouraged him to have sex with a stripper but when he refused they would call him a “f****t” and “loser”.
The Manhattan court papers also said he was forced to eat orange juice with a fork, that he couldn’t do the job as well as other white firefighters because of his race and was often called a ”closeted homo”.
Troina was also excluded from a firehouse volleyball outing where he was told he was denigrated with homophobic insults.
The 24 year old was fired in December 2016 a week before his probation would have finished by the FDNY denied the claims and said he was fired after a failed evaluation.