A Long Island man was sentenced to 25 years in prison after admitting to sexaully abusing his granddaughter for years —beginning when she was 7 years old — officials announced Tuesday.
The 69-year-old man, whose identity hasn’t been released to protect the victim, pleaded guilty earlier this year to first-degree course of sexual conduct and related offenses after repeatedly abusing the young victim whenever she stayed at her grandparents’ house in Wading River in Suffolk County.
According to the defendant’s admission in court, he subjected the child to repeated acts of sexual abuse from the fall of 2017 until March 2021. However, she only reported the incidents to her mother in July 2022, nearly five years after the first attack, when she was 12 years old.
After her mother told her own mother — the victim’s grandmother and wife of the defendant — the family called the police and the man was arrested for perpetrating “heinous acts of sexual abuse against his own granddaughter,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said.
On Jan. 14, 2025, the defendant pleaded guilty to first- and second-degree course of sexual conduct, both of which are felonies, and endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor.
On Monday, Supreme Court Justice Timothy P. Mazzei sentenced him to 25 years behind bars — a “significant prison sentence,” which according to Tierney should “serve as a deterrent to anyone who may want to prey on children.”
“Sexual abuse has devastating and lifelong effects on anyone who is a victim of it, especially an innocent child,” Tierney said.