MARCH 3, 2000

 FLUSHING MINISTER WHO RAPED HIS NIECE IN HIS HOME SENTENCED TO 9½ TO 19 YEARS IN PRISON

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced today the sentencing of Jung Woo Lee, 52, of 150-51 9th Avenue, Whitestone, on charges of sodomy, rape, attempted rape and sexual abuse after a seven day jury trial. Supreme Court Justice Richard L. Buchter sentenced him to concurrent terms of 4½ to 9 years on the June 6th 1998 sexual assault and 5 to 10 years on the July 1, 1998 rape.

District Attorney Brown said, "The defendant's repeated attacks on his niece, who was entrusted by her family into his care, were brutal and violent betrayals worthy of the most serious punishment. According to the defendant's own testimony, he was attracted to his niece and pursued her in his own home. The trial testimony showed that when she resisted his advances, he threatened to kill her. He attacked her again three weeks later, threatening to choke her if she did not stop struggling. She told her aunt of the attacks but received no support from her. The defendant's claim that his niece and her mother had forgiven him was completely unsubstantiated."

District Attorney Brown continued, "The victim, who had come to study English as a second language at Fordham University, was supposed to stay with her aunt, uncle and cousins from May until December 1998. When she had been there less than a week, her uncle told her, according to his own testimony, that he was attracted to her. He told the court that she crossed her legs like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. She flew back to Korea in early July unable to risk staying with her aunt and uncle, giving up her courses, but returned to testify at trial."

Assistant District Attorney Karen Migdal of the District Attorney's Career Special Victims Bureau, which is under the supervision of Bureau Chief Marjory D. Fisher and Deputy Chief Kenneth M. Appelbaum and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney Gregory L. Lasak of Major Crimes, was the trial prosecutor.