Daughter of Paterson man convicted of sexually assaulting her confronts him at sentencing
As Aswad Ayinde’s daughter stood up to speak, the judge
ordered him to put down the court papers he was hunched over and face the daughter
he had assaulted and raped since she was 8 years old, fathering her four
children.
“I can’t describe how much you hurt me and my sisters,” the
daughter, now 35, said Friday to her father, shackled in a prison jumpsuit, his
head still bowed, eyes never once meeting hers.
As the woman rehashed the horrors her father inflicted on
her and her sisters in Paterson, Ayinde burst out, “You should’ve told the
truth instead of lying,” bringing an admonishment from Superior Court Judge
Raymond Reddin, who told him that not only did he believe the daughter’s
testimony, but also so did the 12 jurors who convicted him.
Ultimately, the daughter said she forgave her father and
hoped at some time he’d repent.
“But obviously, with your head down like that, you do not
understand,” she said, three of her sisters fighting tears in the courtroom
pews.
After the daughter finished, Reddin on Friday tacked on 50
years to the 40-year prison sentence Ayinde, 54, received in 2010 after being
convicted of raping another of his daughters, who bore a fifth child.
The former music producer and self-proclaimed prophet faces
three more trials for allegedly sexually assaulting three other daughters after
requesting separate trials.
Prosecutors have said that Ayinde dominated his children as
a god-like prophet who wanted to create a race that carried his pure bloodline.
Over the years, he molested five of his seven daughters and fathered six
children, the family and their attorney said.
By about 2001, the family had mostly split up, Ayinde
“bouncing around,” but still in reach of his family, the daughter said. In
2003, he tried to rape her for the last time.
“That was it. … I just felt stronger,” she said.
Yet, it wasn’t until she and her sisters learned that Ayinde
had fathered more children with other women that they decided to go to the
authorities in 2006.
“We found out we had other siblings, young siblings, and we
had to put him to a stop,” the daughter said after the sentencing hearing.
“Even though we were healing, they could still fall victim.”
These days, the sisters stay in close touch. The daughter
who spoke Friday is studying communications at Essex County College — “straight
A’s last semester,” she said — and has just finished a memoir. As for her four
children, two have genetic illnesses that doctors told her likely were due in
part to the incest. A 9-year-old daughter died in 2010 of spinal muscular
atrophy.
In sentencing Ayinde, Reddin could not hide his disgust for what
he had done.
“By 13, most fathers are taking their daughters to the park
… teaching them to ride a bike,” he said. “You took her in the bedroom and
repeatedly raped her to complete your disgusting, revolting fantasies.”
Source: North Jersey
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