MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — An accused rapist took the stand for a second day Tuesday under grueling cross-examination about charges that he raped, sexually abused or harassed five women, including one he allegedly stalked in front of her Upper West Side apartment.
"I'm not some kind of creepy guy. I'm not watching her out the window," Hugues-Denver Akassy, 43, testified at his trial on Tuesday, after a prosecutor asked him about a young lawyer who called police after spotting him outside her window.
Akassy is charged with raping a Russian tourist in Riverside Park, sexually assaulting an Upper East Side woman, and stalking and harassing three others.
He insisted he only ran into her three times because he was subletting an apartment near the Upper West Side woman's building at the time of the incident, and said he was not a threat to her.
The ascot and sports-jacket wearing, self-described ladies man who claims roots in Paris and the Ivory Coast also said he didn't believe the email from the alleged victim's boyfriend asking Akassy to stop contacting the woman.
"Did it occur to you that when you got an email that says, '[She] is scared, please don't contact her,' [that] she's scared?" Assistant District Attorney Jessica Troy said on cross-examination.
"Why should she be scared of me? Because I'm black? I think that's prejudiced," said Akassy who added, "I'm not a psychic."
He claimed the email could have been sent by a hacker, and said that's why he decided to confront the woman on March 11, 2009 in front of her West 76th Street building, at which point she told him to "get lost."
Akassy also tried to correct the ADA when she asked him if he habitually asked the women he emailed out on dates.
"Where I come from, it is not a date. It's a rendezvous," he said, defining his trysts as when "you have made up your mind to meet that person, to explore romance and charm and everything."
Prosecutors confronted Akassy with a series of at least nine separate "form" emails he sent to different women that read almost identically to one another.
"Bonjour ... I found you quite elegant, interesting and attractive," the emails begin, according to the ones read during Tuesday's testimony.
They continued: "I guess one of the beauties and mysteries of the life's journey are special people you meet along the way. It is a small world and sometimes the best relationship develops by chance."
"So when you meet women randomly, as you say, you actually send them all essentially a form email, right?" ADA Troy asked Akassy.
"You write these emails essentially to give people the feeling they're somehow particularly attractive to you, is that right?" Troy added.
"Yes and no," he answered, explaining that he considers it a form of networking and emails men he meets frequently also without pursuing romantic opportunities.
Earlier Tuesday morning, prosecutors grilled Akassy about claims that he was an international television journalist who covered conflicts in Africa and interviewed major world figures.
They painted him as a plagiarist and grilled him about a positive comment on his website, using a 2009 web archive, which was apparently lifted from praise for the Charlie Rose Show's page. Akassy denied knowing anything about the similarities.
Cross-examination was expected to continue on Wednesday morning.
