Suspect Charged in Videotaped Rapes

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Police arrested a man they said lured two young teenagers to his Upper West Side apartment, where he and another man raped the girls while a video camera was running. Police from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey arrested one of the suspects, Alex Jean, 18, outside the bus terminal when the younger of the two girls, cousins ages 13 and 14, pointed him out to police.


Mr. Jean was arraigned on charges of two counts of rape and one count each of promoting a sexual performance by a child and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the criminal complaint.


The authorities gave this account of the girls’ statements to police: They were lured Friday at about 4 a.m. to the man’s 10th-floor apartment, on Amsterdam Avenue between 101st and 102nd streets, with the promise that they would appear in a music video. As the videotape began rolling, the girls were told to strip from the waist down. They were instructed to “take off their pants and underpants, bend over, and say, ‘I like it like that,’ while the unapprehended other videotaped the activity,” the criminal complaint states.


The girls were then forced into a videotape rape, with one man raping one girl while the other suspect, about 30, raped the other girl, officials said. Mr. Jean allegedly sexually abused his victim “while refusing to let her leave the bathroom and while refusing to return her cellular phone,” according to the court document.


Mr. Jean’s attorney, Mel Sachs, said his client did work in the music industry, but the lawyer denied that Mr. Jean had any kind of sexual relations with the girls. As for the charges, Mr. Sachs said: “These highly inflammatory accusations, made by street-smart, manipulative kids who are roaming the Port Authority all night, have not been proven, and the truth as to what really happened will be shown in court.”


The relationship between the suspects and the girls – authorities said one resides in Staten Island and the other in Camden, N.J. – was not yet clear, although the Port Authority police were said to believe they met in the terminal.


The girls’ accounts emerged later Friday after they had disappeared from the bus station, at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street, the day before. Police officials said the mother of one of the girls was in the bus terminal with the cousins Thursday. After an argument between the woman and one of her charges, the girls took off, leaving the mother in the station. The following day, the woman returned to the transportation hub and reported to a police officer that the girls were missing. It was not immediately clear why she waited a day to report the cousins’ disappearance.


The police officer stopped a girl who was alone in the bus station and bore a resemblance to one of the missing girls. During the course of their conversation, the girl, unprompted, pointed to Mr. Jean, who was just outside the terminal, and accused him of raping her, law enforcement officials said.


After arresting the suspect, the police officer escorted the girl to the police station inside the bus terminal, where her cousin was already reporting the alleged rape.


Both victims were treated at Bellevue Hospital and received counseling by a rape-crisis counselor there.


Mr. Jean, whose lawyer said he is American although his family hails from Haiti, is being held in $7,500 bail at Rikers Island, according to the spokesman for the city’s Department of Correction, Thomas Antenen. Mr. Jean’s next court date is tomorrow.


This is not Mr. Jean’s first run-in with the law. He was one of three people arrested July 2, 2004, in connection with a sale of crack cocaine to an undercover police officer, according to a spokeswoman for the Office of Special Narcotics, Magda Gandasegui.


Mr. Jean’s role was counting money, Ms. Gandasegui said, and last September 27 he pleaded guilty to criminal sale of a controlled substance. At his November 16 sentencing, Mr. Jean received a one-year prison term, Ms. Gandasegui said, to run concurrently with a sentence in a drug-related case in Brooklyn.


The other suspect remained at large last night.


The Port Authority police said they were working in conjunction with the New York Police Department to find him.


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