Series of Assaults Began When Child Was Eight Years Old
WASHINGTON - A 29-year-old man, from Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to a 29 ½-year prison term on charges stemming from sexual assaults he committed against his longtime girlfriend’s daughter, Acting U.S. Attorney Vincent H. Cohen, Jr. announced.
The defendant, who is not identified here to protect the privacy of the victim, was found guilty in June 2015 by a jury in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia of four counts of first-degree child sexual abuse and one count of first-degree sexual abuse. He was sentenced by the Honorable Michael Ryan. After his prison term, the defendant will be placed on lifetime supervised release. He also must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
According to the government’s evidence, the defendant lived with the victim and her mother in the same household in Northwest Washington, and acted as the victim’s father-figure for many years. He began sexually abusing the victim in 2012 while her mother was at work; at the time, the victim was eight years old. The sexual abuse continued regularly for over one and one half years, until the victim’s mother returned home from work and caught the defendant sexually assaulting the child. The defendant has been in custody since his arrest in May 2014.
In announcing the sentence, Acting U.S. Attorney Cohen praised the work of those who investigated the case from the Metropolitan Police Department’s Youth Division. He also expressed appreciation for the work of the child abuse experts at the Child and Adolescent Protection Center at Children’s National Medical Center, as well as the Children’s Advocacy Center, which conducted the child forensic interview and provided other critical services to the victim. He acknowledged the efforts of those who worked on the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Paralegal Specialists Joyce Arthur, Troy Griffith and Tiffany Jones; Victim/Witness Advocates Christina Principe, Melissa Milam, and Lezlie Richardson; the Child Waiting Room staff of the Victim/Witness Assistance Unit; Litigation Technology Specialists Joshua Ellen and Jeanie Latimore-Brown; and Legal Interns Stephanie Dinan, Monisha Rao, Emma McArthur, Angela Lam, Maria Romas, and Rachel Bond. Finally, he commended the work of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rebekah Holman and Danny Lam Nguyen, who tried the case, and Andrea L. Hertzfeld, who investigated and indicted the case.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
