An elderly woman from Brooklyn was allegedly raped by her great-nephew and testified against him in a court hearing.
According to New York Daily News, the 81-year-old woman gave an account of the extremely unpleasant experience during the defendant’s trial in a Brooklyn court on Wednesday.
While on the verge of tears, the elderly woman testified on how her great-nephew, Jewell Powell, 36, turned on her after she had let him stay in her home. "I hate him,” she expressed with great dismay as she claimed that he used to be her favorite.
Powell was then allowed by his octogenarian relative to sleep on her couch back in 2019. But it was also on June 13 that of the same year that everything has changed and Powell had “lost his mind”.
“I was in my bedroom watching TV,” the woman said and recalled that she had to go up from her bedroom to the kitchen. And from up there she found Powell undressed.
“He grabbed me,” she said.
Yahoo News said that Powell had forcefully brought the woman to her bedroom and committed sexual acts against her will. The woman said that she was trying to fight back but it only enraged Powell even more. “When I kicked him, he put me back on the bed, put his hands on my throat and said, ‘Next time you do that I’ll smother you,’” she said to the court.
The woman also said during the testimony that Powell had later given her a knife and that he challenged her to kill her own grand-nephew. Powell threatened to kill himself instead after his great-aunt had refused to do so.
The elderly woman had revealed the traumatic experience to her grandson and daughter following that day. Powell was then arrested two days later and was held at a facility on Rikers Island with a bail of $70,000.
In 2015, a teen was arrested in Brooklyn after he had raped an 82-year-old woman. Asa Roberts, who was then 18 years old, had been charged with several counts, including rape, robbery, burglary and assault.
