A Brooklyn man eluded arrest in the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter for more than 10 years — until the alleged crime was exposed when the now-18-year-old woman wrote about the attack in a college application essay, prosecutors said in court Tuesday.
“My mom got married … Toward the end of their marriage he began to rape me,” the victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, wrote of the alleged 2003 assault in her essay for a Florida religious college.
“I never told anyone till later on in life but at that point in my life I was scared.”
Albert Tarrats, 62, faces 25 years in prison if a Brooklyn Supreme Court jury finds him guilty of first-degree rape.
Brooklyn prosecutor Anna Krutaya said Tarrats was arrested after his alleged victim showed the essay on “What makes her who she is” to her mother in 2012.
“After reading the letter [the mom] immediately contacted the police which is how the criminal action got started,” Krutaya said in court.
Tarrats defense attorney Earnest Hammer, whose cell phone embarrassingly rang loudly during his closing argument, callously tried to claim the victim only wrote the essay to curry sympathy so she would be admitted to the school.
“It’s her best effort to try to get the attention of the admissions committee of that college to convince them she was the best candidate for that school,” Hammer said, noting that she wasn’t accepted and even mocking her grammar.
“When the admittance committee picks up this letter, the first thing is a grammatical error,” Hammer said.
Tarrats — who claimed to detectives when he was arrested that his stepdaughter had come into his bedroom and abused him — carried a thick black bible into court and was stone-faced as prosecutors described the heinous attack against his then-stepdaughter.
The jury began deliberations late Tuesday afternoon and will continue Wednesday.