By JOE D'AQUILA
Staff Writer

TRENTON — The city man who publicly defended three of the suspects accused of raping his 7-year-old stepdaughter at Rowan Towers is a sex offender who served time for penetrating a 5-year-old girl with his finger, according to court records.

The man, who is also the biological father of the 15-year-old girl involved in the case, made the shocking statements outside a court appearance Thursday for 20-year-old Greg Leary — one of the accused whom he defended.

The man said his 7-year-old stepdaughter told him Leary and two others — 19-year-old Timear Lewis and an unnamed 17-year-old — actually tried to help her instead of participating in the assault as police allege.

The man’s name is being withheld by The Trentonian in an effort to protect both his daughter and stepdaughter, but court records revealed that in 2006 he was accused of assaulting a girlfriend’s children.

The complaint against him, from Oct. 3, 2006, states that he choked a 4-year-old boy and slammed him to the ground, slapped the buttocks and struck the face of a 7-year-old girl, and penetrated the vagina of a 5-year-old girl with his finger.

On April 26, 2007, the man pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child by engaging in sexual conduct with the 5-year-old.

From the time of his arrest, records show, he was incarcerated in Mercer County Jail. After nearly two years in the county facility, he was sentenced to time served on July 21, 2008.

The children involved were those of a girlfriend, but they were not the 15-year-old or the 7-year-old involved in the Rowan rape case.

In that incident, which occurred the night of March 28, the 15-year-old allegedly brought her 7-year-old stepsister to a party in an apartment at the troubled Rowan Towers complex. The teen, who has been charged with pimping out the younger girl, allegedly had sex with a group of men and boys for money before selling her sister off to allow a group of males to have their way with her.

Five male suspects, those already mentioned and a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old, have been arrested and charged with assaulting the 7-year-old.

Leary, one of the men defended by the child’s stepfather, also has been charged with raping the stepfather’s 15-year-old biological daughter because Leary is 20 and the girl is below the age of consent. Those publicly defending Leary have not denied that he had sex with the older girl, but have said that she lied to him and stated she was 18.

For the longest time the media portrayed child molesters as white males. Now we've come to see child molesting is as common in the black community as welfare collecting and blaming whitey.

http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2010/04/11/news/doc4bbfa2c3e0e37212665512.txt