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Judge to rapist: 'You disgust me'
‘You disgust me,’ a judge tells a child molester.
YOUNGSTOWN — A man who was convicted by a jury last week of raping two young boys is sentenced to five consecutive life prison terms plus 20 years.
Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court imposed the prison time Monday on Michael Kaufman, 40, of Berkshire Drive, who was convicted Thursday of four counts each of rape and gross sexual imposition and one count of felonious sexual penetration.
“You disgust me,” Judge Krichbaum told Kaufman, who showed no emotion. “The beauty of what the jury has done is they’ve put an end to you raping little boys. It’s just never going to happen again,” the judge added.
The crimes occurred in Mahoning County between 1995 and 2003, and the victims were both male relatives of Kaufman, who were between the ages of 8 and 11 when the offenses occurred.
The judge imposed a life prison term on each of the four rape counts and on the felonious sexual penetration count. He also consecutively imposed the maximum prison sentence of five years on each of four gross sexual imposition counts for a total of 20 years.
The life sentences were mandatory for each rape count because of the youth of the victims and the jury’s finding that Kaufman committed the crimes using force, said J. Michael Thompson, assistant county prosecutor. There is no possibility of parole, he added.
The victims, who testified in the trial, are now 15 and 20 years old and reside in Wisconsin. The older boy lived in the Mahoning Valley when the assaults occurred. The younger boy, who has always lived in Wisconsin, was assaulted during summer visits to the Mahoning Valley.
“You’ve destroyed your family, shattered lives and preyed on innocent children ... You are a weak and evil coward. I will never forgive you ... We are going to move on now and heal while you rot,” wrote the father of the younger boy in a statement read by Officer Sue Ellis of the Youngstown Police Department.
Calling Kaufman “a child rapist’ and “a monster,” the same boy’s mother wrote that a life sentence was appropriate because it would deny Kaufman access to more children.
“I would find it entirely appropriate if you were to live a nightmare for the rest of your life behind bars, surrounded by cold concrete and hard steel, friendless, loveless and hopeless,” she wrote.
“I want you to forever be branded as the most vile of sexual offenders,” she wrote in a statement, which Ellis also read.
Kaufman’s lawyer, John B. Juhasz, said an appeal will be filed. Kaufman made no statement at his sentencing.