INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Brooklyn Teen Accused Of Raping 85-Year-Old Jewish Widow Misses Hearing, Receives 115-Year Sentence

By Jonathan Brown
Published on: 09:53 PST, Jan 11, 2017

A New York man accused of sexually assaulting an octogenarian has received a century-plus long jail sentence for the crime.

Brooklyn resident Asa Robert, 20, was initially found guilty of the alleged July 2015 rape of an 85-year-old Brighton Beach widow back in December of that same year, so says the New York Post. On Tuesday, January 10, more than a year after his initial judgment, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Vincent DelGiudice sentenced Robert to 115 years in prison for the crime — except he wasn’t there to hear it directly due to, of all things, supposed camera shyness.

“My client is choosing not to be present during this proceeding,” defense attorney Samuel Karliner relayed to the court.

“[Robert] specifically said he does not want to come out because he does not want his picture taken.”

Like the accused, Robert’s victim, whose name is being protected, similarly chose not to attend Tuesday’s proceedings, albeit for different reasons: speaking of her ordeal during the trial last November had caused the woman to become “re-traumatized,” according to her counsel, prosecutor Olatokunbo Olaniyan.

While he was wholly sympathetic regarding the victim’s absence, DelGiudice was seemingly anything but over Robert’s choice to remain in his cell for the outcome of the case.

“The basic tenant of [civilian] behavior is to have deference towards those more vulnerable than everyone else, particularly the aged,” he stated.

“I see no logical reason or any grounds to offer any mercy to [Asa Robert as] he showed no mercy to his victim.”

The incident was said to have taken place on the morning of July 13, 2015, when Robert, then 18, managed to sneak his way inside of the senior citizen’s home as she swept up her front lawn. When she reentered her residence, the teenager approached the 4’9, 90 lb., Jewish woman with a knife and demanded that she hand over all of the money she kept in the house.

“He started to yell, “Gimme the money,”‘ she recalled, as transcribed by the New York Daily News. ‘I said, “I’m a poor old lady, my family handles all my money.'”

After ransacking her home for items of differed value, including clothes and an umbrella, Robert then made his way for the door, before turning back around and ordering the old woman to head toward her bedroom. That is where, she says, the accused violently raped, sodomized, and suffocated her as she desperately pleaded for him to release her and call 911.

“[It] was the most disgusting thing that has ever happened to me,” she told the court last year, adding that it was also the reason why she is now wheelchair-bound. “He was on top of me like a pile of bricks. It felt like he was trying to crush me to death.”

It wasn’t until hours later that Robert finally relented his attack by bringing the woman a bottle of tepid water and her medical alert button. After he departed, the victim called her son-in-law for assistance, but held back on what she suffered through for a week, until she felt safe enough to do so with her adult daughter. Through use of surveillance cameras, police were able to nab Robert several days after the assault in the nearby neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

A report from WPIX-11 notes that along with the rape, Asa Robert has racked up at least eight past arrests for other notable crimes, such as robbery and gang assault. Incidentally, it is said that he will also have to face a judge in February for a previous resisting arrest charge. Karliner says that his client fully maintains his innocence regarding the sexual assault.

[Featured Image by DCPI/NYPD]

Share this article: Brooklyn Teen Accused Of Raping 85-Year-Old Jewish Widow Misses Hearing, Receives 115-Year Sentence
Crime New York
More from Inquisitr