Wading River man admits to years of “heinous” sexual abuse of his granddaughter: D.A.

A Wading River man pleaded guilty in the middle of a jury trial on Tuesday to repeatedly sexually abusing his granddaughter over the course of years, beginning when she was seven years old, according to authorities.

“Children should feel loved and protected while in the company of their grandparents,” Suffolk County District attorney Raymond Tierney said in a statement released about the case on Wednesday. “This defendant, however, perpetrated heinous acts of sexual abuse against his own granddaughter.”

The 69-year-old perpetrator, whose name is being withheld by the prosecutor’s office in order to protect the identity of the young victim, pleaded guilty to two violent felonies in the first and second degree for the years of attacks, as well as a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child.   

Mr. Tierney said in a statement that as part of his guilty plea, the Wading River man admitted that between the fall of 2017 and March 2021, he “subjected his granddaughter to repeated acts of sexual abuse whenever she stayed over at her grandparents’ home.”

Nearly five years after the first attack, when she was 12, the victim told her mother about what her maternal grandfather was doing to her. The mother then informed her own mother, the defendant’s wife, about the abuse.  

The grandmother confronted the man, who admitted to the abuse, authorities said. The family immediately contacted police, and the defendant was arrested, at which time he “again confessed to having sexually abused the victim,” according to Mr. Tierney.

The perpetrator faces up to 25 years in prison, followed by two decades of post-release supervision, when he is sentenced on Feb. 26.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Dana Castaldo and Katherine Flinchum of the Child Abuse and Domestic Violence Bureau, and the investigation was conducted by Detective Adolfo Berrios of the Suffolk County Police Department’s Special Victims Section, Mr. Tierney said in the statement.