A Philadelphia man was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in a state prison Monday after pleading guilty to raping a 6-year-old girl in 2023.<\/p>\n
Rasheed \u201cMoses\u201d James, 53, of the 2500 block of West Oakdale Street, will also have to register as a sex offender for life under Megan\u2019s Law as part of the plea agreement worked out by Deputy District Attorney Danielle Nispel and defense counsel Anna Hinchman.<\/p>\n
James was charged in January 2024 with 10 counts each of rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, aggravated indent assault of a child and unlawful contact with minors for sexual offenses, along with other charges of indecent assault, child pornography, indecent assault, corruption of minors, filming a child sex act, criminal use of a communication device and possessing an instrument of crime.<\/p>\n
He pleaded to one count each of rape of a child and filming a child sex act, both first-degree felonies. The remaining charges were dismissed under the plea accepted by Common Pleas Court Judge Dominic Pileggi.<\/p>\n
According to an affidavit of probable cause filed by Yeadon Police Sgt. Nicholas Tokonitz:<\/p>\n
Yeadon Detective Leah Cesanek was contacted by Officer Ron Kent about a possible child sexual assault and spoke to the victim\u2019s family members in early 2024.<\/p>\n
The girl, then 6, told her mother that James had put his hand down her pants, which he initially denied when confronted.<\/p>\n
James later apologized to the victim\u2019s grandmother for \u201cselecting\u201d her, at which point an altercation ensued. The grandmother provided police with James\u2019 cellphone.<\/p>\n
The victim provided additional information that James had digitally penetrated her vagina and put his penis into her vagina. She said these assaults happened as many as 40 times and he also forced her to perform oral sex on him at least 15 times.<\/p>\n
She said James additionally took pictures of her private parts and told her not to tell anyone.<\/p>\n
Family members of the victim said in court Monday that James had actually threatened to kill them if the victim told anyone, and said they found a knife that James allegedly used to scratch the girl\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want you to know this day that I hate you for what you did to my granddaughter,\u201d the victim\u2019s grandmother said. \u201c\u2026 She can never forget the harm you put her through. She can never forget what you\u2019ve done to her. She expressed to me and her therapist just last week how hard it is for her to deal with the hurt and pain her mind and body goes through.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou changed our lives forever and you changed my daughter\u2019s life forever, and she\u2019s been forced to keep this tragic secret,\u201d her mother said.<\/p>\n
She said even the smallest scrape on a child\u2019s knee is painful to a mother, but the harm James inflicted here is magnitudes larger and the victim still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n
James did not comment and Hinchman provided numerous evaluations, including competency evaluations, as part of the record. She asked that the judge include a note indicating the prison should take James\u2019s intellectual functioning into account so that he can receive sex offender treatment.<\/p>\n
Pileggi said he would make that note and ordered James to have no contact with the victim or her family, or to be in any position or situation where he works with children or vulnerable people. He will also forfeit the phone and provide a DNA sample to state police, comply with the recommendations of his evaluations and undergo a new psychosexual evaluation.<\/p>\n
James will also have to undergo an evaluation by the state Sexual Offender Assessment Board to determine whether he meets the criteria for a sexually violent predator, which may necessitate another hearing.<\/p>\n
James is not eligible for early release, but was given credit for time served from Jan. 9, 2024, to April 27, 2026. He will also have to serve three years of sex offender probation upon his release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Philadelphia man was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in a state prison Monday after pleading guilty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[46,212,182,139,28,69,71,70,210,12212],"class_list":{"0":"post-178126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-delaware-county","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","15":"tag-philadelphia-news","16":"tag-top-stories-dtd","17":"tag-yeadon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}