Father is Sentenced
by Andrew Smith, Staff Writer
Originally published by Newsday, July 30, 2002
A Dix Hills man who had molested his daughter since before she could sit up told a Suffolk County Court judge yesterday that he tried to stop but couldn't.
The man, 36, spoke before Judge Louis Ohlig sentenced him to 18 years in prison. Newsday is not identifying the man because doing so would identify his daughter, now 5.
The man pleaded guilty two months ago to several felonies, admitting that he engaged in oral sex with his daughter, posted pictures of himself doing that on the Internet and made her available to other pedophiles. One of those men, Bruce Wernick of Valley Stream, is charged with sodomizing the girl and is awaiting pretrial hearings.
"This case and others like it shouldn't exist," the man said, tearfully reading a statement he had prepared. "Certainly, a parent should not victimize his child, but I have done exactly that."
The man said he genuinely loved his daughter and his son, 8.
"I love them so much, and now I will never know them," he said. "I just want to hold them tight and be a good father to them, but I can't now."
The man said he saw a psychiatrist in an attempt to curb his obsession with child pornography and his daughter.
"I know I needed to stop," he said. "I didn't know my actions would hurt so many people."
Ohlig said, "Parents are supposed to protect kids from evil. This was a very terrible thing, to have evil in your own home." He lamented the easy access to child pornography on the Internet, which he said gives people "wild ideas."
"I don't know where we're going in this country," Ohlig said.
He urged the man to make amends with his daughter—a difficult task, considering there is a permanent order of protection that prohibits him from having any contact with her.
The man's attorney, Robert Gottlieb of Commack, asked that his client remain in protective custody and be transported to an upstate prison separately from any other prisoners. Child molesters often are targets for attack by other prisoners.
The man was arrested in October after a Suffolk detective posing as a pedophile in the "babysex" online chatroom encountered him.
The man offered to swap his daughter with the detective, who claimed he had a 9-year-old daughter. When the detective asked the defendant if his daughter, then 4, would "know what to do," the man assured her she did, and he said he eagerly awaited the day when she'd be old enough to have sexual intercourse with him.
