Cop on
trial for allegedly raping a 14-year-old runaway he found New Year's Day 2011
Darrin Nemelc, claims he simply took the girl to his
apartment to use the bathroom. His trial has begun in Manhattan Supreme Court.
NYPD officer Darrin Nemelc exits courtroom of Manhattan
Criminal Court on Tuesday after first day of trial where he is accused of
raping a 14-year-old runaway.
Prosecutors say an ex-NYPD officer is an opportunistic sicko
who preyed on a “highly vulnerable” 14-year-old runaway he lured to his
apartment by pretending to care.
Darrin Nemelc, 45, took advantage of the Brooklyn girl he
found sitting alone on a park bench in Washington Heights on New Year’s Day
2011, they said.
“He’s the ultimate evil human being,” the victim’s
stepmother told the Daily News. “He needs to be hung by his gonads and shot to
death.”
Nemelc, the married father of two girls, is charged with
rape, sex abuse and child endangerment. He quit the NYPD in 1999 and is now a
city transit worker.
Nemelc denies the charges and claims he took the girl to his
apartment so she could use the bathroom.
“He is now being accused of something he did not do,” said
defense attorney Kimberly Summers. “There’s going to be two very different
sides of the story.”
The victim endured a rough childhood before she the alleged
attack. She was only 9 when her alcoholic mother died in a freak drowning,
leaving her with bouts of depression.
The girl ran away on Jan. 1, 2011, after her father came
home drunk from a New Year’s celebration, Paul said. She got off the subway in
Washington Heights, where Nemelc spotted her.
“Instead of helping her to safety, he took her to his
apartment ... and sexually assaulted her,” Assistant Manhattan District
Attorney Rena Paul told the jury on the first day of Nemelc’s Manhattan Supreme
Court trial.
Paul told the jury the victim will testify that Nemelc
sexually assaulted her in his bathtub and on his living room couch.
The prosecutor said medical evidence supports the charges.
“She felt he might harm her if she didn’t do what he said,”
Paul said.
Paul said Nemelc woke the girl at 6 a.m. and sent her out
into the cold alone. She rode the subway to Canal St., where she told an MTA
employee she had been raped.
An emergency room doctor who took the rape kit testified the
girl was given a cocktail of drugs at the hospital to prevent sexually
transmitted diseases and pregnancy.
After the trial closed for the day, the judge accommodated a
defense request to let Nemelc slip out through the courtroom’s side door, which
is normally reserved for court personnel and witnesses. The maneuver allowed
him to dodge news photographers in the hallway.