Egg Harbor City predator paid 12-year-old rape victim $10 to keep quiet
A 70-year-old sex offender who tried paying off a girl to keep quiet about raping her in 2019 was sentenced to over 11 years in jail on Thursday.
Jose A. Rodriguez was found guilty by a jury in November of raping the 12-year-old girl inside his home and then giving the girl $10 to "not to tell anyone about what happened in his Egg Harbor City house because he didn’t want to get in trouble with the police," according to Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon G. Tyner.
The girl told her mother about the rape later the same day on Aug. 20, 2019, and reported the incident to police, Damon said.
Rodriguez was sentenced on two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a minor child under 13 and must serve 85% of his sentence.
Rodriguez also received a sentence of 5 years for third-degree endangering the welfare of a child by sexual conduct. He will serve his sentence at the Adult Diagnostic Treatment Facility, which evaluated him to be a "repetitive and compulsive sexual offender," according to Damon.
He was already a convicted sex offender from a 2004 incident and was listed on the state's sex offender internet registry.
Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com or via Twitter @DanAlexanderNJ