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Paterson man gets maximum 40-year sentence in daughter’s sex assault
Friday, November 4, 2011
Last updated: Friday November 4, 2011, 8:40 PM
BY RICHARD COWEN
STAFF WRITER
The Record
A judge sent Aswad Ayinde and his twisted vision as father of a master race of pure-blooded children behind bars Friday, sentencing him to 40 years in prison for repeatedly raping one of his daughters.
Aswad Ayinde Ayinde, 52, an award-winning music video director who thought he was keeping the blood lines pure by impregnating his own children, was given the maximum sentence by Judge Raymond A. Reddin in Superior Court in Paterson.
Reddin called Ayinde a “calculating and cunning” pedophile.
“Maximum sentences are rare,” he noted before handing down punishment. “But I’m going to give the defendant the maximum time and not one day less.”
Reddin said he wished he could give the defendant more time in prison, but sentencing guidelines restricted him to a maximum of 40. “Anything more might be a justifiable sentence, but it wouldn’t be a legal one,” he said.
Ayinde directed the video for The Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly,” which won an MTV Video Music Award in 1996 for best R&B video. He fathered six daughters by the same woman and impregnated three of them, the result of the bizarre belief that by fathering children through his daughters, he was somehow keeping the blood lines “pure.”
The family bounced around from East Orange, Orange, Brooklyn and finally Paterson. Reddin noted from trial testimony that Ayinde frequently pranced around the house nude and sodomized one daughter “more than 100 times.”
He was arrested in July 2006 after Ayinde’s wife and children contacted the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office. He has been behind bars ever since, while the Prosecutor’s Office has brought rape charges against him on behalf of five of his daughters.
Victim appears
Only one trial has been held so far, and Ayinde was convicted in 2010 of eight counts of aggravated sexual assault, criminal sexual contact, endangering the welfare of a child and lewdness. The victim testified against him at the trial and appeared in court on Friday to speak at sentencing.
The woman, now in her early 20s, spoke about how her father began molesting her as a child. As she matured, so did the nature of the attacks, culminating in rape and sodomy. She eventually bore him a child, and, like her other sisters, was terrorized into keeping silent about the attacks.
“He felt that I was of his own creation,” she said of his desire to produce “blueblood” offspring. “He felt he was above the law. But I think it is important for him to see me finally stand up to him.”
The young woman never lost her composure as she addressed the judge. Ayinde stood silently, glum, staring straight ahead. Reddin was clearly moved by the victim’s plight and told the woman she was “remarkable” for having survived her father’s onslaught.
“Despite the childhood that was taken away from you, you have grown into a remarkably sound person,” Reddin told the woman. “Because of your courage [to testify against him], he will probably spend the rest of his life in jail, which is where he belongs.”
Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Squitieri had asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence, arguing that Ayinde had used the child “as his own sex toy.”
Ayinde headed straight back to prison after Friday’s sentencing. But his trials may have just begun. Four more sets of charges must be resolved, all brought by family members who claim he sexually abused them.
Reddin has scheduled a conference for Nov. 14 to discuss how to proceed with the unresolved cases.
