The vicious sex fiend who raped an aspiring actress in TriBeCa last year copped a plea Monday in exchange for 35 years behind bars.
Jonathan Stewart, 26, admitted to chatting up the 21-year-old beauty before yanking her off a bench in Hudson River Park and dragging her in a chokehold to a cluster of nearby bushes in the early hours of Sept 22, 2012.
“That’s correct” the demented brute calmly responded as a prosecutor described the heinous crime as part of the guilty plea before Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Renee White.
Stewart, wearing a green plaid shirt, expressed no emotion as he admitted to beating, strangling and repeatedly raping the young woman during the attack near Harrison and West streets.
She broke free at one point but didn’t get far before Stewart dragged her back into the bushes, again in a stranglehold, and raped her a second time, prosecutors said.
The victim finally escaped her tormentor and fled naked into the arms of two park officials screaming,
“I’ve just been raped! I’ve just been raped!”
“It was terrifying,” she told The Post shortly after the attack. “I thought it would never end.”
Stewart was already a top-level sex offender before the savage assault and spent seven years in state prison on sex abuse and robbery convictions.
Stewart will be sentenced to 35 years plus 20 years of post-release supervision at his next court date on Sept. 28.
“This defendant brutally raped a young woman who was trying to enjoy a sunrise in one of our city’s public spaces,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in a written statement. “I commend the victim for her courage, and hope that this guilty plea brings her some closure.”