Rooftop-sleeping “French journalist” Hugues Akassy is sporting some dashing fashion neckwear while awaiting a jury’s verdict on his five-woman alleged spree of sex and harassment attacks — a white ascot fashioned out of a Rikers bedsheet.
The quirky correctional cotton almost got the fashion-conscious Ivory Coast native barred from his own trial, according to a source involved in the trial.
“We were told by correction officials that they couldn’t bring him to court because he had tied a bed sheet around his neck,” source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It was this billowing bedsheet, and he had tied it around his neck and he’d tucked the rest down the front of his shirt, and they weren’t going to allow him to come to court,” the source said.
It was a knotty empasse, with Akassy refusing to come to court without his now-trademark low thread count neckwear.
Ultimately, a compromise — correction officials trimmed his sails to a more manageable, ascot-like length — allowed Akassy to be fashionable and on time for the start of trial, the source said.
He’s worn the couture cravat frequently during the two weeks of testimony, and has it on again today. No word yet if there is a matching “de la Rikers” pillowcase cummerbund in the offing.
Jurors began deliberating this morning. Prosecutors say he claimed to be an award-winning, jet-setting international broadcast journalist — even showing off a bogus website and telling tall tales of having interviewed Hillary Clinton and covered the war in Rwanda.
In reality, he was sleeping on rooftops and sneaking into gyms to shower. Still, he managed to strike up email correspondences with five women he met while cruising the upper east and upper west sides.
Prosecutors say he raped one of the women — a French tourist named “Tatiana” — during a Riverside Park “picnic” in 2009, leaving her bruised and hysterical, according to police and medical testimony.
He is accused of a 2009 stairwell sex attack against a travel agent he’d been dating casually. Three additional women — a law student, an art gallery director and a Metropolitan Museum of Art historian — have accused him of harassment and stalking campaigns.
Akassy faces up to 25 years if convicted of the top charge of rape. He is insisting that he his a misunderstood Romeo who was merely having consensual “rendezvous” with a quintet of interested, but ultimately rude and ignorant women.
Jurors appear to be spending their first hours of deliberations considering that rape charge. They have asked for readbacks of testimony by police officers who described how “Tatiana” collapsed in sobs and fell to the ground into a fetal position when taken back to the scene of the alleged attack.