NEW YORK - A former conservative radio host who dubbed himself the "Crossover Negro" was indicted Friday on charges he raped a former friend of his stepdaughter at his Manhattan apartment, prosecutors said.

Reese Hopkins, whose real name is Edward Maurice Hopkins, said at a court appearance Friday that he was innocent. "I'm fighting for my life," he said in court before a hearing.

Assistant District Attorney Robert Hettleman said in court Friday that a grand jury had indicted Hopkins, 39, on counts of first- and second-degree rape and endangering the welfare of a child. The criminal complaint said Hopkins assaulted the girl between Sept. 1, 2004, and Oct. 31, 2004, at his Upper East Side apartment. The girl was 11 or 12 at the time; her birthday is in mid-September, the complaint said.

"Mr. Hopkins has not had any sexual contact with this child," Hopkins' lawyer, Keith Cavet, told Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Abraham Clott. Cavet said Hopkins had moved out of the apartment at the time he is accused of the charges and said the "hypersexualized" girl invented the charges against him.

Hopkins, of Malden, Mass., was held on $300,000 bail and has another court appearance next month.

Hopkins was laid off last week from WRKO-AM in Boston, where had hosted a morning talk show since December. He worked in New York from 2000 to 2005, on the "Star & Buc Wild Morning Show" on Hot 97.1 FM, where the Jewish-African-American host billed himself as the "Crossover Negro."

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