The homeless man suspected of raping a 14-year-old girl inside Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town housing complex earlier this year has been indicted on first-degree rape charges, prosecutors announced Thursday.
Germaine Parham, 33, was initially arrested back on Feb. 3 in upstate Amsterdam, where police had tracked him down following a lengthy investigation. Police said the suspect had 32 prior arrests on his rap sheet, many of them for robbery.
Parham faces a possible lifetime prison sentence if convicted of carrying out the Jan. 29 rape of the 14-year-old victim, who was heinously attacked inside a stairwell of a building near 1st Avenue and the 1st Avenue Loop within the normally quiet Stuyvesant Town complex.
“This brutal, broad daylight attack horrified this community and the entire borough,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “As alleged, Germaine Parham raped a young girl who was just trying to return home.”
Just after 11 a.m. on Jan. 29, law enforcement sources said, Parham allegedly followed the girl into one of the Stuyvesant Town buildings and took an elevator ride with her before leaving.
Moments later, according to the charges, he confronted her inside a second building as she waited for an elevator. Police said he allegedly grabbed and dragged her into a nearby stairwell, then slammed her head against a railing.
After grabbing a cellphone from her pocket, prosecutors said, he allegedly displayed a knife, threatened to kill her, and then proceeded to rape her.
Court records indicated the suspect ended the attack and fled the scene with the victim’s cellphone after a bystander entered the stairwell.
The victim, meanwhile, reported the attack to the 13th Precinct. She was treated for her injuries at a local hospital.
Parham was identified as the prime suspect following a preliminary investigation of the rape. Members of the NYPD Fugitive Task Force then tracked him down in Amsterdam, a town about 30 miles northwest of Albany, where he was arrested on Feb. 3.
Having been held in custody without bail since his arrest, Parham was indicted on six counts each of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape, along with additional counts of first-degree robbery and burglary, second-degree burglary, and first-degree sexual abuse.
Conviction on a predatory sexual assault, a class A felony in New York state, carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
