MANHATTAN — The man who was arrested for dragging a jogger into the woods of Central Park to try to rape her previously did time in jail after being charged with holding a woman captive and raping her in 2014 and for having sex with a 14-year-old girl in 2013, prosecutors said.
Forest Richardson, 26, who was arrested Wednesday for the Central Park attack, had been handcuffed about 30 other times for charges including assault, grand larceny and criminal contempt, an NYPD spokesman said Thursday morning.
Many of the records of those arrests are sealed, the spokesman added, but one case from two years ago in Queens showed harrowing details of Richardson's prolonged and brutal attack on another woman.
On Dec. 16, 2014, he was arguing with a girlfriend in Arverne, where he was living at the time. He took her cellphone and threatened to kill her if she tried to leave the home, prosecutors said.
Richardson, who was 24 at the time, held the woman captive for more than two weeks and subjected her to rapes and beatings, Queens prosecutors said.
He kicked and punched her, leaving bruises on her legs, thighs, arms, stomach and a cut on her forehead, the woman told police. But she later refused to cooperate with authorities several times and aspects of her story couldn't be corroborated without her, sources said.
Once, she tried to flee while he was in the shower, but he allegeldy caught up to her and pulled her back inside, according to the criminal complaint.
He raped her on New Year's Eve before letting her use her phone to call her social worker for help, prosecutors said.
Another police officer found the phone in Richardson's pocket later that day when he was arrested, prosecutors said.
Richardson pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to four months in jail, prosecutors said. He never served time for the rape and imprisonment.
A year before the Queens case, Richardson was charged in Manhattan with raping a 14-year-old girl on Aug. 26, 2013.
But he eventually pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced to six month in jail.
Richardson, who now lives in Melrose, hadn't yet been arraigned on the Central Park attack as of Thursday afternoon, officials said. He was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation after his arrest, police said.
