Four teenage girls who were sexually assaulted by a Brooklyn man between 2011 and 2014 learned on Wednesday that the man who pled guilty to the attacks will not be spending any time in prison. The girls, ages 15, 16, 18 and 19 at the time of the attacks, came forward last June after reading an article in The New York Times about a Brooklyn man, Willie Stuckey Jr., who had been accused of sexually assaulting a prostitute, and had since been facing a 15-year sentence.
After pleading guilty to three counts of criminal sexual act and a count of unlawful imprisonment, Stuckey was immediately arrested and was awaiting a sentencing hearing. The prosecution had wanted to sentence Stuckey to 25 years to life but the judge accepted his plea to a 15-year prison sentence.
The 16-year-old who was the victim of one of the Stuckey attacks told reporters that after the attack, he asked her “Did that count? Are you ready to make this next sentence count?”
During sentencing, Assistant District Attorney Celena Michel told the court that Stuckey had assaulted all four girls and that they had told police about the assaults as soon as they saw him coming. On one occasion, a 13-year-old said that “I’m sorry that I had to help you with this.” “He left me alone,” said the victim in another attack. Stuckey asked one of the girls whether she liked his penis, then stripped and began pulling her pants down.
“It was horrifying,” one of the girls told the Times in the article published last June, “because we felt his penis, but it wasn’t that exciting.”
Stuckey, who is now 30, fled the Brooklyn attacks but was soon apprehended and extradited to Florida, where he was charged with more than 70 counts of child molestation. While in Florida, he faced six additional child sex abuse charges and was eventually sentenced to 17 years in prison. His attorney had argued during his Florida trial that his Florida sentence did not include the 40 years he had spent in prison in Brooklyn after his first conviction, which was overturned when it was discovered that he had received ineffective counsel.
The victim of Stuckey’s first attack took to Twitter to express her disappointment on Wednesday morning.
So disappointed that a Judge let a man who raped me twice, and assaulted 4 other girls will get no jail time. It’s not right. Read the article and feel sick. https://t.co/2bOiD4cQSg — Jesika Potts (@jessika_pep) March 21, 2018
Read the full story at The New York Times.
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