MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A Manhattan jury has convicted a self-described Romeo of raping a Russian tourist in Riverside Park and of stalking and harassing three other women.
Hugues-Denver Akassy, 43, met the rape victim at the Time Warner Center, before taking her on a picnic date in Riverside Park on July 27, 2010. While the victim declined to testify at trial, prosecutors called eyewitnesses who testified that they saw her flee the park trembling and upset.
"There's no explanation for a woman being traumatized in the middle of the night in a park," said juror Bob Gorsline, 66, of the Upper East Side, who added that he and other jurors found the eyewitnesses to be more believable than Akassy.
"There was very little credibility in his entire testimony," Gorsline added.
Juror Lajon S. Daniels, 35, of Harlem, said Akassy seemed to have "a Jekyll and Hyde syndrome," using his skills to charm some of the women he met before turning angry and aggressive over email and subsequent meetings.
"He clearly did the same thing to each person in a different way," Daniels said.
Jurors also voted to convict Akassy of stalking and harassing a gallery director as well as a Metropolitan Museum of Art employee and an attorney who said she was harassed by Akassy in person and over email.
All of the alleged acts occurred between November 2007 and December 2010.
Akassy faces a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 25 years at his sentencing on Nov. 17. He sat still during the reading of Monday's verdict.
“The defendant refused to take no for an answer,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement after the verdict. “He stalked these women obsessively and, when they refused his advances, he grew irate, harassing them over the phone, via e-mail, and in person."
Jurors said they did not believe Akassy's testimony because his stories did not add up, and said he dodged important questions from prosecutors.
Still, jurors acquitted Akassy of other indictment charges, including claims he sexually attacked a woman in the stairwell of her Upper East Side building.
He was also found not guilty on several other stalking and harassment charges after a roughly three week trial.
Akassy argued at the trial that he liked to schmooze with women he encountered as part of his professional "networking" agenda. He said he often took women on wine and cheese picnics in Riverside and Central Parks.
He allegedly posed as an international journalist to attract women and directed would-be targets to his website that included credentials ripped off of the Charlie Rose show's site, according to trial testimony showed.
