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Now 22, she should be freed after already spending four years behind bars because the sentencing judge overlooked a “long history of horrific sexual and psychological abuse by her father, who twice impregnated her; her significant mental retardation; [and] the significant role her father played in the death of her first child and the assault of the second,” the judges wrote.
The girl lived with her father — who worked as a cook at a Hackensack restaurant — his wife, his brother, and a sibling. The others in the household said they didn’t know of the relationship or of either of the girl’s pregnancies.
Police in September 2005 found the newborn boy still alive at the bottom of the shaft in the three-story building after neighbors heard him crying. He landed on a pile of trash, suffering a fractured skull, authorities said at the time.
The girl’s mummified remains were found nearby, they said.
Investigators said the girl told them that the father, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, threatened to kill her if the teen didn’t throw the babies down the shaft.
He later pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated sexual assault.
And even though he apologized for his “heinous crimes,” he also said he saw the girl as “a person I’m in love with…. I would not have [had] sex with her if she had not seduced me,” beginning when she was 13.
CLIFFVIEWPILOT.COM is not identifying him to protect his daughter, who was the victim of horrific sex crimes. She pleaded guilty two years ago to reckless manslaughter and aggravated assault but was incorrectly sentenced, the appeals judges wrote in a decision released yesterday.
It is “unlikely she would commit another offense” given the circumstances, the panel wrote, citing cooperation with authorities that helped put her father behind bars for 35 years in 2007, just before she was sentenced to five years. As a result, the judges concluded, “the mitigating factors substantially outweighed aggravating factors.” They determined that two concurrent four-year sentences were enough. That made her eligible for parole a month ago.
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