A man charged by East Hampton Town Police with sexually abusing a 6-year-old child in 2022 has been indicted by a grand jury and was arraigned on felony sexual criminal act and abuse charges Tuesday in the county courtroom in Riverside of Justice John Collins, who set bail at $100,000.
According to the complaints filed by the police, Erick L. Velasquez, 32, of Riverhead, who has been incarcerated since his December 21 arrest, unable to make the same $100,000 cash bail that was initially set in East Hampton Town Justice Court, attempted to force the 6-year-old to perform oral sex, and sexually touched the child.
Authorities said the crimes that led to felony charges of sexual abuse in the first degree and criminal sex act in the first degree occurred in the spring or summer of 2022. Both charges are classified under New York State law as violent felonies. According to the complaints on file at East Hampton Town Justice Court, detectives interviewed the victim multiple times before bringing Velasquez in for his own interview, during which he essentially confessed.
In addition to the felony counts, Velasquez was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor.
District Attorney Ray Tierney’s office moved quickly after Velasquez’s arrest to obtain an indictment, which they secured around the Christmas holiday. If they had not done so, under state law, they would have been required to release him on December 26.
He was initially held, after his arrest, in the county jail in Yaphank, before being transported on New Year’s Day to the Riverside facility, in preparation for his Tuesday arraignment.
Velasquez is being represented by the Suffolk County Legal Aid Society. The district attorney’s office has a special division, the Child Abuse and Domestic Violence Bureau, which prosecutes such cases.
The case has been assigned to Suffolk County Justice Karen Wilutis, whose courtroom handles almost all the criminal sex cases out of the East End. However, Wilutis was away on Tuesday, so the arraignment was moved to Collins’s courtroom. Velasquez’s case will be returned to Wilutis’s courtroom later this month.
If Velasquez is convicted of the top charge, committing a criminal sex act in the first degree, Wilutis would be required by state law to set a determinate sentence for Velasquez, that is, a specific number of years to be served as opposed to a range of years. She would set the sentence at the number of years she finds appropriate, if Velasquez is convicted, which would be at least five years or as many as 25 years in state prison.
