Oscar Winner Is Accused of Raping Young Actresses

[Five Inch Taint]

A 71-year-old Academy Award-winning songwriter who the authorities said used his Oscar to dazzle aspiring actresses was arrested Tuesday on charges of raping or sexually assaulting 11 women lured to his East Side apartment from 2005 to 2008. His female assistant was charged with helping him.

Skip to next paragraph

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
Joseph Brooks after his arrest on rape charges on Tuesday.
The songwriter, Joseph Brooks, whose hit ?You Light Up My Life? won the Oscar for best song of 1977, recruited the women, ranging in age from 18 to 30, many of them from the Pacific Northwest, with advertisements on Craigslist and a talent Web site offering movie roles, then ?incapacitating them? with wine and ?intimidating them? into silence, Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, said.

At a news conference announcing the charges in a 91-count indictment, Mr. Morgenthau said that in addition to the 11 charged assaults within the five-year statute of limitations, ?we have information about one rape going back to 1970.? He said investigators were seeking other possible victims.

Mr. Brooks, disheveled and seemingly disoriented from the effects of a stroke last year, pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and was released upon assurance of posting the equivalent of a $250,000 cash bond by Thursday. He faces up to 25 years in prison on the most serious charges.

?He didn?t do any of these things,? said his lawyer, Jeffrey C. Hoffman, arguing for no bail.

Mr. Hoffman said Mr. Brooks was too frail to have committed the assaults. But Maxine Rosenthal, a prosecutor, said he was strong and fit at the time.

Mr. Brooks?s assistant, Shawni Lucier, 42, of Washington State, was charged with knowingly facilitating the attacks, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.

?She picked the victims, set up travel arrangements and reassured them,? said Lisa Friel, chief of the district attorney?s sex crimes unit.

At times, she said, Ms. Lucier also reassured mothers worried about sending their daughters alone to New York on flights paid for by Mr. Brooks. And, she said, Ms. Lucier was sometimes present in the apartment when the women arrived, but left before the assaults.

She is scheduled to surrender next week, prosecutors said. A message for comment left on her home voice mail was not immediately returned.

?My only regret is that facilitation only carries a sentence of a year,? Mr. Morgenthau said.

The attacks came to light, Mr. Morgenthau said, only in February and March 2008 when two women gave accounts to rape counselors. The other women were found later by investigators.

None of the victims knew one another, he said. Ten of the 11 were flown in by Mr. Brooks from California, Florida, Oregon and Washington, he said.

Nine had responded to an ad on Craigslist last year, one on an unnamed talent Web site in 2007 and one had met Mr. Brooks at an audition in 2005, he said.

Lt. Adam Lamboy, the commanding officer of the Police Department?s Manhattan Special Victims Squad, said that a search of Mr. Brooks?s apartment turned up an item some of the women have said Mr. Brooks used to bedazzle them: his Oscar.

?The Oscar was used as a prop,? Lieutenant Lamboy said. As the women told it, he said, Mr. Brooks would say: ?This could be you, this could be you holding this Oscar. If you do what I say.?

He said they recounted that Mr. Brooks would have them engage in a role, such as a prostitute, and to enhance their seductive manner, he would ply them with wine.

?At this time, we don?t believe this was an actual movie role he was casting for,? the lieutenant said.

In addition to writing, producing and directing the 1977 movie ?You Light Up My Life? that introduced his award-winning song, Mr. Brooks also wrote music for such Hollywood hits as ?Eddie and the Cruisers? (1983) and ?The Lords of Flatbush? (1974).

But In court, his lawyer said his income last year did not exceed $75,000 and his assets totaled, at most, $1.2 million.

Ms. Rosenthal said outside court that Mr. Brooks had been married four times, was now single, and had three children.

In an e-mail message cited in court by Ms. Rosenthal, one of Mr. Brooks?s sons appeared to caution him, saying, ?You can?t continue to act in the same way.?

[Carlos Spicy Wiener]

doesn't matter how old the guys is, we have a guy in here and he's 71 for rape........I know.........and the girl was 22 go figure, it just takes putting the fear of god into the victim and they will usually do what you want. But more than likely his assistant helped him.