Posted on Thu, Apr. 26, 2007

Father gets 35 years in daughter's rape
By JANET FRANKSTON LORIN
Associated Press Writer

JERSEY CITY, N.J. --
A father who raped his teenage daughter over several years and ordered her to throw two newborns he had fathered down an air shaft was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison.

The 45-year-old West New York man pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated sexual assault. The Associated Press is not identifying him to protect the identity of his daughter, the victim of a sex crime.

One of the babies survived and is in foster care.

"These are heinous, cruel and depraved acts committed against your own flesh and blood," said Superior Court Judge Kevin G. Callahan, who imposed the maximum sentence.

According to prosecutors, the father threatened to kill the daughter and her mother if she did not throw the babies down the shaft.

In a written statement, crafted with the help of a cellmate, the man acknowledged his "atrocious crimes."

"I am totally repentant for my past actions and I do deserve to pay for this," the man wrote in the statement read in court by his attorney. But he also maintained that he did not throw the children out the window.

The man told a psychologist that he didn't view the girl as his daughter, but "as a person I'm in love with," adding, "I would not have sex with her if she had not seduced me."

The daughter has pleaded guilty to reckless manslaughter and aggravated assault, and faces a maximum of seven years in prison, said Mike D'Andrea, an assistant Hudson County prosecutor. She is to be sentenced on May 10.

Her father, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, could be deported after completing his sentence, authorities said.

DNA tests showed the man fathered both children - a girl, who died just after birth, and a boy, who survived - with his daughter, who is now 19.

The man started a sexual relationship with his daughter in 2000, when she moved to the United States from El Salvador at age 13, D'Andrea said.

Authorities said she had not met her father until she moved to the United States.

At the sentencing, Broege said psychological reports indicated the father has extremely low intellectual aptitude. Authorities have described the daughter as borderline mentally retarded.

Broege described a statement she made to authorities that she was attracted to him, "and I began to provoke him until he finally gave in." Her statements about their relationship later became accusatory, Broege said.

The relationship was discovered after police found a newborn boy in September 2005 at the bottom of an air shaft in their three-story apartment building. Neighbors alerted police when they heard a baby crying.

The boy suffered a fractured skull but survived after landing on a pile of trash and old cigarette packages, D'Andrea said. He is now in foster care.

When authorities investigated further, they found a mummified baby girl born in 2003, D'Andrea said.

The man lived in a small apartment with his brother, wife and two adolescent children and worked as a cook at a restaurant in Hackensack.

According to statements given to police, neither the brother nor the wife knew of the relationship or knew the girl was pregnant.

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