Man who raped his stepdaughter for 10 years sentenced to 20 years in prison: prosecutor

CENTER MORICHES, NY — A Center Moriches man was sentenced to 20 years in prison Monday after raping his stepdaughter over a 10-year period beginning when she was 7, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said.

According to Tierney, the 36-year-old man was also sentenced to 20 years of post-release probation after pleading guilty in June to first-degree sexual abuse of his stepdaughter for years.

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To protect the identity of the minor victim, prosecutors are not releasing the defendant’s name, Tierney said.

According to court documents and the defendant’s confessions during his guilty plea, the man raped his stepdaughter regularly between 2014 and 2023, starting when she was seven years old. Over time, the defendant’s abuse escalated and progressed to anal rape of the child, the prosecutor said.

He sent the child obscene pictures of himself and asked the girl to take unauthorized pictures of herself and send them to him, the prosecutor said.

To ensure he got the pictures, the man threatened to repeatedly anally rape the child if she did not cooperate, Tierney said.

In May 2023, the victim begged her mother not to leave her alone with her stepfather, Tierney said. When her mother asked why, the girl told her mother everything he had done to her, the prosecutor said.

When the girl and her mother learned of this, they hatched a plan to catch him in the act, Tierney said.

One day, the girl’s mother pretended to go to work but returned minutes later through an unlocked side door, Tierney said. Inside, she saw the man standing over the girl, completely naked, trying to rape her, Tierney said.

The girl’s mother stopped him from completing the act and after the police were notified, he was arrested, the prosecutor said.

On June 20, the man pleaded guilty before Acting Superior Court Judge Karen M. Wilutis to first-degree sexual abuse of a child, a Class B violent felony, the prosecutor said.

On July 29, Judge Wilutis sentenced the man to 20 years in prison, followed by 20 years of probation upon release. He was represented by James DeAngelo, who could not immediately be reached for comment.

“For nearly a decade, this defendant abused his family’s trust and inflicted immeasurable trauma on an innocent child,” Tierney said. “No punishment can fully heal the physical and emotional wounds, but this sentence will ensure that the defendant cannot abuse this survivor, her family, or anyone else. The perpetrator will be in prison where he belongs.”