Lawyer: Rape allegation 'fabricated' against ex-trainer

SOUTHEAST, N.Y.— The lawyer representing Alexandru Hossu said a 15-year-old girl "fabricated" a rape allegation against his client — her mother's ex-boyfriend who had the mother arrested a month before the woman's overdose death.

Hossu, Putnam County (N.Y.) District Attorney Adam Levy's former trainer, lived with the girl and her mother during the alleged rape in 2010 and for several months afterward. After they split up, Hossu reported to the Putnam Sheriff's Office in 2012 that the girl's mother broke into his apartment, lawyer Robert Altchiler told The Journal News.

After her mother's death, the girl friended Hossu on Facebook. He unfriended her in January, concerned she would get hurt because he was posting loving messages about a new girlfriend, Altchiler said.

The lawyer assailed Putnam County Sheriff Donald Smith, accusing him of arresting Hossu in haste and disclosing inflammatory information about Hossu's immigration status, possibly out of personal animus toward Levy. He is asking the Westchester County District Attorney's Office, which is handling the prosecution, to remove Smith from the case and perhaps subject him to an internal investigation or discipline.

"Sheriff Smith's decision to obtain the arrest warrant, frankly, seems so bizarre that I seriously doubt that it was authorized by the Westchester County district attorney," Altchiler said.

Smith's office has referred questions to the Westchester district attorney. The Westchester District Attorney's Office would not comment.

Hossu, a 35-year-old Romanian immigrant, was charged March 20 with two counts of first-degree rape, accused of attacking the girl, then 12, in Southeast in 2010. He is alleged to have raped her twice in one night, choking her and pushing her onto the bed.

The girl had kept the secret until recently, when she made the allegation to a school counselor, police said.

Altchiler called the allegation "preposterous."

"Her allegation is that my over 6-foot-tall, over 200-pound, muscular, exceptionally strong client decided, out of the blue one Sunday night, to savagely and brutally rape her, not just once, but twice, and that he violently choked her as a means to accomplish the brutality," the lawyer said. "She is also saying that she was able to keep this brutal attack a secret from her mother, from her relatives, from her doctors, from her teachers, from her guidance counselors, from essentially everyone and anyone she knew."

Rape experts, however, say the scenario isn't unusual.

"It is very very common, indeed more common than not, that a victim will take a long time to find the courage to raise an allegation of sexual assault, and most victims never do," said CarLa Horton, executive director of Hope's Door, an organization that assists victims of domestic violence. "A little girl can absolutely keep a secret like that."

Smith, in publicizing the arrest, announced that Hossu was in the country illegally and worked as Levy's live-in personal trainer.

It triggered a war of words between the district attorney and sheriff, who charged that Levy, the son of TV's Judge Judy Sheindlin, tried to use his office to influence the investigation.

Levy, in turn, has accused the sheriff of targeting him.

Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell has called for the sheriff to step aside from investigating.

Altchiler went further, claiming the sheriff misled the public.

In identifying Hossu's residence, Smith gave Levy's address to the media, even though the sheriff knew Hossu was living elsewhere at the time of the arrest, the lawyer said.

"In fact, the arrest warrant was executed at Hossu's actual residence, proving beyond any doubt that the sheriff knew he was not living with the D.A.," the lawyer said.

Hossu befriended many people in law enforcement through his training work at a gym in nearby Brewster, N.Y.

"The Putnam County Sheriff and his deputies who worked out at that gym, knew the gym was and is owned by a deputy sheriff from Dutchess County," Altchiler said. "For literally years before the arrest, members of the Sheriff's Office were well-aware who my client was, where he lived and worked."

He acknowledged that Hossu did live in Levy's six-bedroom home, but said he did so only briefly. He couldn't immediately specify dates.

Even when he wasn't living with Levy, Hossu used his address because he needed a fixed place to receive mail, the lawyer said.

He was living in an office suite at Clock Tower Commons in Brewster when he was arrested March 20.

"Since the government decided to mislead the public about facts that surround this case, I am correcting those facts," the lawyer said.