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Richard Grossy, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Uruguay, already has been beaten up twice in the Essex County Jail, defense attorney Hussain Gatlin said during Friday’s sentencing in Hackensack. Yet he continues to object to receiving sex offender therapy in a different setting.
“I never expected anyone to see me,” he told Superior Court Judge James J. Guida during his sentencing.
The judge responded that Grossy “does not have to intend as long as there is someone in the area.”
Guida sentenced him to five years for each incident to be served at the same time. Under the state No Early Release Act, he must serve 85% of the term before being eligible for parole.
Grossy, who’d been held on $250,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail since his June 2013 arrest has nearly two years of jail credit that will be applied to the sentence.
The mother of one of the victims, who attended with the girl’s grandfather, told the judge her daughter “was too afraid to come today.”
She wrote a letter, instead, which noted, in part, that the residence where Grossy exposed himself to her “is in the same town where I live, only a few blocks from my grandparents, and near my school.”
She also said that her mother “has to check the windows that she put alarms on every night.”
“I have to have lights on in the room at all times,” the girl’s letter added. “I get up and slam the door in the middle of the night.
“He is always going to be standing in my doorway,” she wrote. “How can I stop my dreams, and remembering?”
“Please protect us from this man. I was only 12 and in 7th grade, an innocent little girl.”
The grandfather asked the judge for “the most you can give him…because a person like him will do this time and time again.”
“Today is the day for punishment,” the grandfather said, “and five years is not unreasonable.”
STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Mary K. Miraglia
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