Cops raped teen: judge
Two NYPD cops raped a vulnerable teen member of the police youth program, cruelly taking advantage of the underage girl to “satisfy their depraved interests,” an internal department judge has ruled.
The officers’ “shocking professional and sexual misconduct” included behavior from one of them that “would cause any responsible adult, let alone a parent, to recoil in horror,” the NYPD judge wrote in a scathing ruling made public last week.
Then-Officers Sanad Musallam and Yaser Shohatee “targeted’’ the girl, who was 15 at the time and a member of the NYPD’s Explorers program, according to the disciplinary documents.
Musallam and Shohatee, now 34 and 41, respectively, separately raped her amid dozens of phone chats and hundreds of text exchanges, which included “sexually explicit” photos, between 2015 and 2016, the records claim.
The judge, Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Trials Paul Gamble, recommended dismissing both cops after finding them guilty of the sexual encounters and other internal misconduct charges in a 41-page ruling that forcefully rejected the officers’ narrative.
Both cops had denied the allegations and remained on the force at full pay until they were fired on March 25, three weeks after Gamble’s ruling — and four years after the allegations were reported to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, according to disciplinary and payroll records.
Neither officer was ever criminally charged, with the case falling apart after the teen refused to continue to cooperate with investigators, said a spokesman for the DA’s office.
The two officers could not be reached for comment and their lawyers did not return calls.
Shohatee, who met the teen on the job, solicited photos from her on Snapchat and asked her in early 2016 if she “would be down to have sex,” the documents say.
The cop, who was 38 at the time, then had the girl over to his apartment late at night at least twice between November 2015 and May 2016, according to the ruling.
Meanwhile, Musallam first met the girl when her mother called 911 after she went missing.
The teen once sent him an illicit photo of herself “wearing a shirt and thong underwear, revealing a large area of her buttocks,” according to the documents.
Musallam claimed he saved the photo as “insurance . . . just in case” the girl accused him of “malfeasance” — yet never blocked her number, the ruling says.
The judge wrote, “The evidence supports a finding that Respondents 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.”