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“His wife loves him and wants him back. His daughter wants him back,” Frank Lucianna told a judge in Hackensack, before she sentenced Carlos Bermudez-Rosado to 14 years in prison. “How can this possibly be reconciled?”
This enraged Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Marybel Mercado-Ramirez, who in graphic detail described the horrific violations that Bermudez-Rosado pleaded guilty to last year.
Carlos Bermudez-Rosado (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
These included vaginal, anal and digital penetration and the groping of her breasts and buttocks, beginning when the victim was 9 and continuing at least 15 times.
In one instance, she said, he forced the child into fellatio on him, then ejaculated in her mouth and laughed when she ran to spit it in the sink.
“God bless America,” Mercado-Ramirez said, as Bermudez-Rosado sobbed, wiping his face on his orange jail jumpsuit. “This is the only place where you can commit such egregious acts and get up in public and cry before a judge.”
The girl, now 13, was “consistently and repeatedly raped by this man,” the prosecutor said.
“People call him a good worker, a good neighbor,” she added. “He is not so behind closed doors. He’s not loyal to his wife, he’s not a good person, he doesn’t love his children like he says he does. He carried out consistent, continuous deviant behavior, in secret.
“His behavior is predatory, not human.”
Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
Bermudez-Rosado pleaded guilty after the girl and her family agreed to a deal that would avoid putting her through the trauma of a trial.
“The abuse hurt,” the youngster wrote to Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi. “It stung and hurt a lot.”
“Your honor, this is a terrible case,” Lucianna told the judge. “It’s a dichotomy — an outrageous event that can’t be explained. I almost feel like saying nothing.
“A Watergate lawyer said the sentencing proceeding is a waste of time,” the 91-year-old defense attorney continued, “because the judge has usually made up her mind.
“I hope you haven’t made up your mind.
“The 14 years is not a contract,” Lucianna concluded. “You have the discretion to reduce it, because it’s a hardship on his family.”
If convicted at trial, Bermudez-Rosado could have been sentenced to 100 years in prison, said DeAvila-Silebi, a former sex crimes prosecutor herself.
“There is no need to reduce it [the 14-year sentence],” she told him. “In fact, I would have given you even more.”
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Marybel Mercado-Ramirez
Bermudez-Rosado will have to serve 85% of the sentence under the state No Early Release Act — 11 years and 8 months — before he will be eligible for parole.
He didn’t qualify for placement at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Avenel, so he’ll do the time in general population at a New Jersey prison.
Once he’s released, he’ll be subject to Megan’s Law supervision and requirements for life. He’s also prohibited from contacting the victim ever again.
Bermudez-Rosado also must provide a DNA sample that goes into a national sex offender database registry.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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