2 cops axed over teen sex
NYPD trial judge rips ‘shocking misconduct’ in abuse of girl
Two cops were fired from the NYPD after having sex with a troubled teen who joined the department’s Explorer program — but dodged rape charges after the girl refused to cooperate with prosecutors.
The disturbing case against Officers Yaser Shohatee and Sanad Musallam was spelled out in a disciplinary trial judge’s March decision posted on the NYPD’s website this week.
“Both [officers] have been found guilty of shocking professional and sexual misconduct,” Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Trials Paul Gamble wrote in a bombshell 41-page ruling.
“The evidence supports a finding that [the officers] individually targeted the minor as a particularly vulnerable individual they were morally obliged to protect but chose to take advantage of to satisfy their depraved interests.”
Prosecutors in Brooklyn interviewed the youngster as part of a sex-trafficking investigation, but she stopped talking to them in 2018, sources said.
“While investigating the trafficking of a teenage girl, our office learned of troubling allegations that she was sexually abused by two police officers years earlier,” Oren Yaniv, a spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said. “While the young victim repeatedly refused to participate in any criminal or other legal proceedings, we referred our findings to the Internal Affairs Bureau, ultimately leading to the officers’ termination.”
Musallam first met the girl, who struggled with substance abuse, when she ran away and her mother called 911, according to Gamble’s decision.
Her mother asked him to “look out” for the girl after that, and he and Shohatee — who met the teen through the Explorer Program — betrayed that trust, Gamble said. He exchanged 742 text messages and 80 phone calls with her between July 2015 and the end of 2016, and never told her mother or reported it when she sent him a photo of herself in underwear, Gamble found.
Instead, he only revealed the photo’s existence at a disciplinary interview in October 2017. “He asserted that he saved it because he was concerned about potential trouble with the job,” Gamble wrote.
“Musallam should have treated this photograph’s receipt as if he had received a bundle of cash in an unmarked envelope: immediately notify his supervisor and contact Internal Affairs,” Gamble wrote.
The ruling also refers to an incident where the girl alleged they had sex in his car while he was off-duty. Musallam’s version of the episode was that he refused her requests to come to her home, but agreed after she texted that she was contemplating suicide.
When he arrived, she got into his car, and he told her, “You obviously lied to get me here,” which led to her getting out of the car within a few minutes, all while her mom sat on a stoop 10 feet away.
The girl offered a different version of the encounter: She said Musallam asked her to perform oral sex on him, and then when he asked her if she would give him manual stimulation, she agreed.
Gamble found the teen’s version of what happened credible.
Musallam’s lawyer, Roger Blank, maintains he didn’t have an inappropriate relationship with the girl, calling Gamble’s decision “a political ruling in this #MeToo environment.”
He said the encounter in the car was the only time they were alone together, and the girl kept changing her story for investigators.
“The girl’s mother reached out to my client and asked her to come out to her home because the girl had issues,” Blank said. “He spoke to her for about four minutes inside his car while the mother was right outside.”
The idea that he engaged in a sex act with her then and there is “ludicrous on its face,” Blank said.
Shohatee met the girl through the Explorer Program, and exchanged 857 text messages with her, Gamble found. The girl said he also talked with her through Snapchat, asking her if she “would be down to have sex,” and asking her to send him photos, which she did.
She told investigators Shohatee had sex with her “four or five times at his apartment in the winter of 2015-2016,” when she was just 15 and incapable of giving consent, Gamble wrote.
Shohatee denied the sex, but he “admitted to meeting with the minor in his apartment on two occasions and his car on one occasion,” Gamble wrote. “He further admitted picking her up and driving her to his apartment, then driving her back near her home once.”
“On another occasion, he sent a taxi to bring her to his apartment and then sent her home in another taxi,” Gamble wrote.
Shohatee said he didn’t think anything was wrong with having the girl in his apartment and car without another adult present, but the trial judge called that statement absurd.
“The insidious and sinister nature of his repeated actions would cause any responsible adult, let alone a parent, to recoil in horror.”
Attempts to contact the two officers were unsuccessful Tuesday. Shohatee’s lawyer did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
The NYPD didn’t provide any information about the officers’ duty status or where they were assigned after the allegations surfaced.
“There is zero tolerance in the NYPD for corruption of any kind, and these two former officers forfeited their privilege to be part of our proud Police Department by disgracefully violating their oaths of office and the public trust,” the NYPD said in a statement Tuesday.” We applaud the fact that it is as a result of an internal NYPD disciplinary trial that these individuals are no longer members of this Police Department.”