Rebecca Baker
The Journal News

A teenage Bone victim called convicted rapist Hector Aviles a "horrible monster" who takes advantage of naive young girls for his own pleasure.

"What this man has done to me and others is sickening," she said yesterday in a court statement. "I wish him to suffer the way I've suffered."

Aviles, 51, will return to prison for eight years for sexually assaulting three Yonkers girls in 2006, after telling them he could use voodoo to solve their problems.

Justice Richard A. Molea sentenced Aviles, who was living in Yonkers before his arrest, yesterday in White Plains under a negotiated plea deal that spared the victims from testifying at a jury trial.

Aviles pleaded guilty in May to a felony count of second-degree Bone for attacking a then-14-year-old girl, as well as two felony counts of third-degree Bone for assaulting two girls who were 16 at the time.

Assistant District Attorney Michelle Lopez read statements from one of the older victims and one from the younger victim.

"It was the worst day of my life," the younger victim wrote. "I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. The pain will never go away. The thought of it just makes me sick."

The two girls sat in the first row of the courtroom and wept as Lopez read their statements. Under a court order, Aviles is barred from ever contacting them again.

The judge derided Aviles at the sentencing, saying he manipulated the girls so he could repeatedly attack them.

"You assaulted their innocence and inflicted wounds upon them that may never heal," Molea said.

Aviles, through an interpreter, declined to make a statement.

The three rapes happened between Oct. 1 and Nov. 8, 2006, prosecutors say. Each time, he told the girls he practiced Santeria and could help them get boyfriends and have a better relationship with their parents.

Part religion, part witchcraft and part herbal healing, Santeria is practiced in Brazil and the Caribbean, but is widely misunderstood.

He also told the girls they needed to perform a ritual with him to get their wishes and could not back out or change their minds or something terrible would happen.

He then raped the girls.

Yonkers police did not catch up to Aviles for a year. When questioned about the allegations, he denied any involvement with the girls, but admitted to practicing voodoo. He was arrested Oct. 18.

Aviles was convicted as a predicate felon and a second child sexual assault felony offender because he was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in October 1997.

In that case, prosecutors said, Aviles told the girl that he would cast a hex on her family if she reported him. He was sentenced to five years probation in May 1998.


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