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NEW YORK – A past someone official miss blameable of taking sexed advantage of underage girls he was supervising at a courthouse was sentenced weekday to quaternary eld in prison, with a determine locution he exploited his employ to prey on undefendable victims.

Tony Simmons declined to intercommunicate at his sentencing, where he got the peak doable penalisation for his conviction in a case that had sparked demonstrations by women's advocates. He had been poised to rise with a probation-only plea care until a determine rescinded the commendation in Nov amid criticism from the regularise professional and an shout from women's rights activists.

Jurors terminal month institute Simmons blameable of committing a criminal sexed act and sexed shout in encounters with two girls inside the borough Family Court building, but they guiltless him of raping a ordinal girl there.

The girls — teen offenders who were existence held in someone facilities — were 15 and 16, low the age of sexed consent in New York. To land Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman, the circumstances and Simmons' dominance over them compounded his crime.

"These complainants were young. They were vulnerable. They had become from backgrounds which had failed them in whatever ways," she said as she sentenced Simmons, 47.

Simmons' lawyer, Gregory Watford, said he plans to appeal.

Simmons' accusers testified that he dead began groping them after taking them divagation in the Family Court antiquity in removed incidents between 2005 and 2008. As a counselor with the city Department of Juvenile Justice earning $37,000-a-year, Simmons was appointed to alter someone offenders to court and countenance after them there.

One girl testified that Simmons prefabricated advances that ended with her performing oral stimulate on him in a locker area. Another said he fondled her in a kitchen after asking her to help him deliver a cooler of food.

"This is not what that kid would wait in that setting, but this is what she got," borough Assistant District Attorney Evan Krutoy said Tuesday.

The ordinal accuser said Simmons raped her in a courthouse elevator; jurors guiltless Simmons of those charges.

Watford represented all the accusers as harassed girls who prefabricated the allegations hoping to intend discover of custody or intend a lawsuit payout.

Simmons didn't declare at his trial, but before his plea care collapsed, he told polity the girls had enticed him, according to land Supreme Court Justice prophetess Mullen. She initially approved his care to plead blameable to rape and another charges in exchange for a prospect of 10 years' probation but after voided the agreement, locution Simmons had shown a "disturbing" lack of remorse.

In the interim, borough District Attorney prince R. Vance Jr. had blasted the probation organisation as "outrageously lenient," and National Organization for Women members and others had demonstrated right the courthouse.

Jurors heard null most the blameable plea during the trial.

"Predators like Tony Simmons conceive these kids don't matter to society," Sonia Ossorio, the chief administrator of NOW's New royalty City chapter, said Tuesday. "But today's sentencing and this effort exhibit that they do matter."

Simmons was suspended and then appointed to desk duty after the allegations emerged in July 2008, polity said. He hopeless in September as the Juvenile Justice Department was moving to blast him, the authority said.

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