A Brooklyn man eluded justice for almost 10 years after he raped his 8-year-old stepdaughter — until she wrote a college-application essay mentioning the attack.
Finally bringing some closure to the now-18-year-old victim, a jury on Thursday found Albert Tarrats guilty of rape and other counts for forcing himself on the girl in the bedroom of her Brooklyn home in 2003.
“My intention for the essay was not to report it. My intention was to tell about how I became the person I am today,” the brave young woman, whose identity is being withheld, told The Post.
“I’m happy now that I included it in the essay because it led to him being convicted.”
Tarrats, 62, escaped arrest until 2012 when his victim — then a high-school junior who had relocated to Florida — wrote about the rape in the application essay she submitted to a Christian college.
“My mom got married . . . Toward the end of their marriage he began to rape me,” wrote the woman.
Tarrats showed no reaction when the Brooklyn Supreme Court jury handed up the guilty verdicts. He faces up to 25 years in prison.
The victim — now an Orlando community-college student who enjoys water polo, singing and crocheting — said she didn’t plan to include the rape in her writing.
“Before you plan an essay, you write down ideas you have — you brainstorm. Writing about the attack was one of the last ideas I thought of,” she said.
“It was hard not to include that because I kept thinking that if that incident hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t be the person I am today,” she pointed out, adding that the attack turned a trusting little girl into a more wary and standoffish person.
After writing it, the young woman was reluctant to show it to her mother, but eventually gave in. “She usually checks my essays for errors but I didn’t want her to read it because I didn’t know what her reaction would be,” the young woman said.
The mom finally read the essay and reported her ex-husband to police.
Jurors praised the young woman’s decision to write about her pain.
“I don’t think it would have come to light unless she wrote that essay. She would have kept it in all her life,” said a female juror, 20.