"N.Y. man gets prison for child rape" Associated Press July 08, 2014
NEW YORK — A man charged with raping his stepdaughter in 2003 was sentenced Monday to 18 years in prison for the crime, which the victim revealed for the first time in a college application essay.
The woman never told her family she was raped when she was 8. On Monday, she issued a statement saying that telling her painful story to a jury has helped her.
‘‘Getting closure and justice on this horrible situation is the best thing I could have gotten from this experience,’’ she wrote, adding that after testifying, ‘‘I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
‘‘I feel a lot happier than before,’’ wrote the woman, who didn’t attend the sentencing. ‘‘I will not forget what happened, but I will move on from it.’’
The 63-year-old man, who came into the Brooklyn courtroom carrying a Bible, stayed silent as he heard her words and his sentence, hanging his head.
His lawyer said he plans to appeal.
‘‘He denies he committed the crime,’’ lawyer Ernest Hammer said, calling the case ‘‘a difficult matter and a very, very unattractive one.’’
The Associated Press is withholding the man’s name because disclosing it could identify his accuser. The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly.
The woman wrote an essay to apply to a Florida Christian college, prosecutors said. She gave an account of how her childhood was upended after her mother embarked on a marriage that ‘‘changed my life forever.’’
A jury convicted the man of rape and other charges.
The man ‘‘has never accepted responsibility for his actions,’’ Assistant District Attorney Anna Krutaya said Monday.
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