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Quashawn Nowlin, 20, had agreed to a sentence of six years and eight months in state prison before he’d be eliglble for parole.
But everything changed yesterday afternoon when the mother told the sentencing in judge in Hackensack that she wanted to see him get help.
Nowlin immediately turned to his attorney and said he wanted his plea withdrawn, insisting that he should never have agreed to it in the first place.
Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Foti scheduled arguments for Sept. 1 from defense attorney Peter Koulikourdis and Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kristin DeMarco to determine whether she should vacate the plea.
DeMarco noted that the girl had been removed from the mother’s care and was living at a secret location with relatives in the South as New Jersey child welfare authorities work to permanently place her in protective care.
“She doesn’t have custody, and DCPP is moving to permanently remove the girl for neglect,” DeMarco said.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in my entire career,” Koulikourdis told CLIFFVIEW PILOT afterward.
He said he expects the girl to recant her earlier statements, vindicating his client.
A grand jury in Hackensack indicted Nowlin indicted last December on charges of aggravated sexual assault, sexual contact and impairing the morals of a minor.
The indictment says he forced the girl to give him oral sex and “touched or kissed” her breasts sometime between May and September 2013.
He assaulted the girl no fewer than four times in that span, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said after members of his Special Victims Unit and Teaneck police arrested Nowlin last September.
Molinelli said the victim told her sister, who then alerted the girl’s mother.
She, in turn, contacted the state Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&P), which notified the unit, the prosecutor said.
Nowlin remained held on $200,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, down from an original $300,000.
STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia
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