A New Jersey man was sentenced to 50 years in prison Friday after being found guilty of sexually assaulting his daughter, adding a half century to the 40 years he was sentenced to in November 2011 for sexually assaulting another of his daughters.
Aswad Ayinde, 55, was found guilty of the charges against the second daughter, whom he impregnated four times, in March. The jury found that he had engaged in sexual intercourse with her when she was between the ages of 8 and 22. At Ayinde's 2010 trial, his former wife said he was trying to create "pure" family bloodlines by impregnating several of his teenager daughters.
Arrested in 2006, Ayinde has been accused of raping five of his daughters, three of whom are believed to have given birth to a total of six children.
Authorities say the assaults began in the mid-1980s and lasted until 2002, when the parents separated, and occurred at residences in Paterson, East Orange, Orange andEatontown. The time period overlaps with the family's coming to the attention of the state's child welfare agency.
According to court records and published reports, Ayinde was arrested in 2000 and charged with kidnapping for allegedly trying to take three of his children from state custody at a Monmouth County medical center. He posted bail and later pleaded guilty to assault and child endangerment and was sentenced to a year's probation.
Prosecutors in Passaic County say one of the daughters, then in her early teens, was raped as late as January 2002. The sexual assaults happened for almost 30 years until Mr. Ayinde and his wife separated, officials said. They occurred in numerous homes across northern New Jersey, even while the family was under watch of state child welfare officials, according to NBC New York. Some of the rapes even took place in an abandoned funeral home.
Ayinde's wife and one of his daughters testified in the earlier trial that New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services had removed at least one of the children from the family's home, and that the family had temporarily moved, first to Jersey City and then to Florida, to avoid the agency's investigation.
In her testimony at that trial, his daughter described experiencing and witnessing beatings administered with wooden boards and steel-toed boots. She said minor transgressions often were punished by the withholding of food.
The girl's mother testified some of the babies were delivered at home and never received birth certificates, and said in at least two instances babies who died in the home were buried without authorities being notified. The children were home-schooled, she said, and were discouraged from interacting with other kids.
"No one really asked questions of each other because somebody would tell on somebody and somebody would get in trouble," she said.
Prosecutors in Passaic County say one of the daughters, then in her early teens, was raped as late as January 2002. Even after she became aware of sexual abuse, she said she was too frightened to confront him.
As Aswad Ayinde’s daughter stood up to speak, the judge ordered him to put down the court papers he was hunched over and face the daughter he had assaulted and raped since she was 8 years old, fathering her four children.
“I can’t describe how much you hurt me and my sisters,” the daughter, now 35, said Friday to her father, shackled in a prison jumpsuit, his head still bowed, eyes never once meeting hers.
As the woman rehashed the horrors her father inflicted on her and her sisters in Paterson, Ayinde burst out, “You should’ve told the truth instead of lying,” bringing an admonishment from Superior Court Judge Raymond Reddin, who told him that not only did he believe the daughter’s testimony, but also so did the 12 jurors who convicted him.
Ultimately, the daughter said she forgave her father and hoped at some time he’d repent.
“But obviously, with your head down like that, you do not understand,” she said, three of her sisters fighting tears in the courtroom pews.
The former music producer and self-proclaimed prophet faces three more trials for allegedly sexually assaulting three other daughters after requesting separate trials.
Prosecutors have said that Ayinde dominated his children as a god-like prophet who wanted to create a race that carried his pure bloodline. Over the years, he molested five of his seven daughters and fathered six children, the family and their attorney said.
By about 2001, the family had mostly split up, Ayinde “bouncing around,” but still in reach of his family, the daughter said. In 2003, he tried to rape her for the last time.
“That was it. … I just felt stronger,” she said.
Yet, it wasn’t until she and her sisters learned that Ayinde had fathered more children with other women that they decided to go to the authorities in 2006.
“We found out we had other siblings, young siblings, and we had to put him to a stop,” the daughter said after the sentencing hearing. “Even though we were healing, they could still fall victim.”
These days, the sisters stay in close touch. The daughter who spoke Friday is studying communications at Essex County College — “straight A’s last semester,” she said — and has just finished a memoir. As for her four children, two have genetic illnesses that doctors told her likely were due in part to the incest. A 9-year-old daughter died in 2010 of spinal muscular atrophy.
In sentencing Ayinde, Reddin could not hide his disgust for what he had done.
“By 13, most fathers are taking their daughters to the park … teaching them to ride a bike,” he said. “You took her in the bedroom and repeatedly raped her to complete your disgusting, revolting fantasies.”
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