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Arsenio Amelco (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
“I hope the sentence I have imposed will prevent you from ever committing a crime against anyone in this country again,” Superior Court Judge James J. Guida told Arsenio Amelco, 24, of West New York.
Amelco terrorized the victim, who was “unable to help herself,” breaking her nose while assaulting her “physically as well as in spirit” in “an unlit enclosed area” beneath a box truck near a River Road restaurant the night of his 23th birthday, Guida said.
“She believed she was going to die and prayed for help,” the judge said. “She had serious physical and emotional injuries.”
This came after the victim asked the judge for “justice to help me to have a better life.”
Following the assault, she said, her mother had to put her own life aside to care for her.
She said she still has trouble sleeping at night, even with the lights on.
She cannot look at her own body, the woman said, or do ordinary things such as going to the movies “because it is dark.”
“I get irritated easily,” she said. “I am not the same as I was before. I have difficulty in family and friend relationships. I carry pepper spray for protection.”
Although Amelco apologized without elaborating, his lawyer claimed that his client had been railroaded and deserves a new trial.
There was a “plethora of evidence that wasn’t considered,” defense attorney Alan Peyrouton told the judge.
The judge told him to take it up with the state Appellate Division, the proper venue for such claims. Meantime, he gave Amelco credit for the 18 months he’s spent at the Bergen County Jail since his arrest — shaving the time he still must serve to a little over 27 years before he can apply for parole. By then he’ll be 50.
Jurors in July convicted Amelco of raping, beating and choking the woman.
Following his conviction, Amelco threatened her in the Hackensack courtroom in Spanish, making her cry, as he was being led out by Bergen County Sheriff’s officers.
Superior Court Judge James J. Guida (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
Peyrouton admitted that his client struck the woman after an argument but insisted that she willingly participated in the sex.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kristin DeMarco, meanwhile, highlighted contradictions in Amelco’s trial testimony against a 105-page statement he gave to police after he was chased and arrested three days after the incident.
Reading sections where Amelco said his date told him “not to put it inside, not to put it inside,” he ultimately told detectives: “Yes, she told me no and I told her yes. Obviously I wanted those things to happen.”
He also told detectives that the woman slapped him first and he struck her back during an argument following a phone call to her mother. The blow broke her nose.
Testifying in his own defense, Amelco — who has been in the U.S. illegally since 2009 — told DeMarco that the statement he gave was inaccurate because “the detective spoke Spanish pretty poorly.”
DeMarco, in turn, reminded jurors during closing arguments that Spanish is the detective’s native language.
She also described the arrest of Amelco, who was packed with his passport and other documents in a travel bag, “a big bag of clothes, his permanent resident card, and a social security card” when detectives grabbed him last July.
Amelco had moved out of his apartment earlier in the day, and police found his belongings in the home of a cousin on Hudson Avenue in West New York.
A female detective climbed out a window and onto a rooftop of the Hudson County apartment as Amelco fled, then spied him hanging from a window ledge on an adjacent apartment building trying to punch in a window pane.
“It was a very narrow alley,” DeMarco told jurors. “She had her service weapon ready and shouted, “Stop! Hands up! Come back!”
Instead of surrendering, however, Amelco began to advance on the officer — and only stopped when a backup detective approached from another direction.
“He was trying to get the heck out of there,” the prosecutor said.
The victim testified that until that night she was a virgin.
Peyrouton contended that she filed charges because of an unhealthy relationship with her mother.
The trial began with DeMarco telling jurors that Amelco approached the woman at a bus stop in West New York, where she was waiting to go to work. He asked her to dinner that evening to celebrate his birthday and she accepted, the prosecutor said.
The evening didn’t go well, however. READ MORE….
TOP: Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kristin DeMarco
BELOW: Defense attorney Alan Peyrouton, Arsenio Amelco
(STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
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