Man sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexual assault of two Rye teenagers

Lina PortmanJune 4, 2024

1 3 minutes read

A Port Chester man apologized in a letter Monday for his “grotesque, heinous and evil” actions before being sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting two teenage girls in two random attacks last year in Rye .

Richard Olmino, 22, even offered in the letter to pay for any therapy victims might need and said he hoped to one day advocate against sexual violence.

Both victims were identified in Westchester County Court by their initials and previously told state Supreme Court Justice James McCarty that they hoped Olmino would learn from what he did to them undergo and would change his life. But they also criticized him for what the older victim called his lack of mercy as he sought his “five minutes of desire.”

The sentence was negotiated when Olmino pleaded guilty in April to first-degree criminal sexual act and first-degree sexual abuse. He assaulted an 18-year-old on Playland Parkway on June 3, exactly a year before sentencing, and on June 23, he began sexually assaulting a 16-year-old jogger at Rye Town Park before an officer security chases him away after hearing the girl's screams.

In this case, Olmino left his cell phone behind, leading to his arrest a few days later. He was initially only charged in the second case, but a DNA match linking him to the first attack led to his indictment for both crimes.

Olmino still faces criminal sexual conduct and strangulation charges in Suffolk County related to a July 2022 incident in East Hampton in which he allegedly forced a woman to engage in sexual contact while wrapping her hands around her. hands around throat.

Rye's older victim said she was heading home from her final high school prom, on a route she had walked and run thousands of times and where she had never felt unsafe. But it was late and there was no one else there and as Olmino approached, she began to “choke on my own fear” as she realized there was no one around – a fear that she had never felt before – because she had no one to protect, to defend. or save her.

“I have never felt fear like I did in that moment,” she said in her victim impact statement. “I had no other choice. The only way I could survive was to freeze. I couldn't outrun you, I couldn't fight back – because I was just an 18 year old girl facing a desperate monster.”

She called the attack “monstrous” and “heinous” but said it would not break her and called Olmino “a coward, hiding in the shell of a man too afraid to face his demons.”

The youngest victim said she was actually glad Olmino didn't attack anyone else that night because another young woman might not have had the same strength as her to get over what he had done to her. She said she would never let Olmino's poor decision define his life and told him he “will always be known for his actions.”

“No matter how caring, kind, or compassionate you are, you are only as good as your worst moment, and you will always be the person who stole my innocence, who made me question my faith in people , I doubted my feelings, my self-awareness, my self-esteem, and made it almost impossible to trust anyone,” she told Olmino. “I hope you succumb to the fact that you are inferior.”

Assistant District Attorney Mollie O'Rourke said Olmino preyed on the victims and deserved a lengthy prison sentence for trying to “extinguish the best in these girls.”

Olmino wrote that he hoped the conviction would be a new beginning for him and that he would “one day be a force for good in society.” But he wasn't ready to express any of those feelings out loud and asked his attorney Lynda Visco to read the letter for him.

He wrote that he spent months after his arrest believing his crimes were the result of childhood trauma and a dysfunctional upbringing before a “sense of guilt” hit him and he accepted that “I'm alone responsible for my actions.”

Lina Portman

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