A man who sexually assaulted two teenage girls in Rye last year has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Richard Olmino, 22, “preyed on two young women who were out and about in their own community and he attacked them and threatened them with either violence or a weapon to get them to do sexual acts,” Assistant District Attorney Mollie O’Rourke told the court.
“Both were teenagers when this defendant forced himself into their lives and he tried to extinguish the very best part of these girls, but as they have both told the court, he did not succeed.”
The two victims, identified to the court by only their initials, were 16 and 18 years old at the time of their attacks.
The older victim, who just finished her freshman in college, spoke about the night she was attacked exactly one year earlier, when she and a friend were stalked by Olmino while they were on their way home from their senior prom. Once the victim was alone, Olmino attacked her.
“That was my last prom, my last month of being a high schooler,” she said. “I felt free that night – unbound by everything. The world was mine, and that façade was broken by you.”
She recalled screaming for help, but those screams “echoed out into space and fell upon deaf ears.”
“I’ve never felt fear like I did in that moment,” she said. “I had no other option, the only way I was going to survive was by freezing. I couldn’t outrun you. I could not fight back, because I was just an 18-year-old girl facing a desperate monster.
“I just wanted to live to see another day, to hug my parents again. No matter how much I begged, or how hard I cried, you showed me no mercy. You threatened to harm me, just so you could get your five minutes of desire. I thought I was going to die there, alone, in the town that I loved.”
She called the attack “traumatizing,” “monstrous,” and “heinous,” but added: “It did not break me.”
“When I look at you, I see a coward hiding in the shell of a man who is too afraid to confront his own demons,” she told Olmino in court.
Supreme Court Justice James McCarty thanked the woman for her words and the strength she showed in delivering them.
Olmino’s second victim, who was attacked last year on a midnight run through Rye Town Park, was only 16 at the time.
She told Olmino he “will always be the person who robbed me of my innocence, made me question my faith in good people, doubt my feelings, self-awareness, self-worth and made it nearly impossible to trust anyone.”
She said she hoped he “succumb[s] to the fact that [he] is inferior.”
Her attack, nearly a year ago on June 23, 2023 — about three weeks after the previous Rye attack — was interrupted by a security guard who heard her screaming. Olmino left his phone at the scene, and police used the phone to track him down. He was then linked to the previous attack through DNA evidence.
Olmino pled guilty in April to the two criminal charges, a criminal sex act in the first degree and sexual abuse in the first degree, at Westchester County Court.
“Westchester County is safer now with this defendant off our streets,” said County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah. “No one should fear for their safety in their neighborhood or community. We thank the brave survivors who showed incredible strength in coming forward to work with our office and ensure this defendant was brought to justice.” In a statement read by Olmino’s lawyer, Lynda Visco, Olmino called his actions “perverse” and “deeply disturbing” and the sentencing “beginning steps for a personal journey of rehabilitation and redemption.” He added that he hoped to one day help advocate against sexual violence with other rehabilitated sex offenders.
Olmino offered to pay his victim’s therapy bills — an offer that puzzled the judge and prosecutor, since that offer had not been part of the sentencing negotiations. The judge decided the offer was a matter Olmino could pursue outside of his sentencing.
In his letter to the court, Olmino said once he accepted “[he] alone [was] to blame” for the crimes, he felt “deeply entrenched pangs of guilt surface” having previously wanting to lay some of the blame to “childhood trauma” and a “dysfunctional family dynamic.”
Olmino grew up in Port Chester, and graduated from Port Chester High School. He currently is facing criminal charges related to a sexual assault in Suffolk County on Long Island. He was out on bail in that case when he committed his crimes in Rye.
Judge McCarty said the victims’ statements were “words far more meaningful and powerful than anything [he] could compose” and accepted the sentence negotiated by the District Attorney’s office.
Outside the courtroom, Rye City Police Detective Lt. Mike Anfuso said Olmino was facing criminal charges related to other matters in Greenwich, Norwalk, New York City, and Suffolk, and those matters were “still outstanding.”
Anfuso said the Greenwich case was using DNA that was gathered during Rye’s criminal investigation.
“We learned so much from this case, especially how young they are,” Anfuso said. “We learned how to understand victims a lot more.”
He added that new training has made police more effective in working with sexual assault victims.
“Cops get in a mindset where it’s very robotic, because you have a set threshold in your head, and to get more out of the victim we had to change our approach,” he said. “We’ve gotten better at that.”