A non-public fairness government turned his New York Metropolis condominium right into a torture chamber of “grotesque sexual violence,” Manhattan prosecutors mentioned Thursday.
The 43-year-old is accused of raping six girls over 5 months in a wicked rampage during which he punched, waterboarded and shocked victims with a cattle prod and stored recordings of the assaults as trophies.
Ryan Hemphill, who stays jailed after his arrest final month, pleaded not responsible to a 116-count indictment charging him with predatory sexual assault and different crimes courting to final October. Hemphill, who can be a lawyer, threatened to have victims arrested or disappeared in a bid to maintain them silent, prosecutors mentioned.
“The defendant told these survivors that he was untouchable,” Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg mentioned. “The indictment makes clear that he was wrong.”
Hemphill sat quietly in a khaki jail swimsuit, his cuffed palms clutching a cross behind his again, as a prosecutor described his alleged crimes in grotesque element.
If convicted, Hemphill might spend the remainder of his life in jail. He was beforehand acquitted in 2015 of choking and holding a knife to his ex-girlfriend’s throat after testifying that he loved strangling her throughout intercourse.
“We have reason to believe these six victims are only the tip of the iceberg,” Manhattan Assistant District Legal professional Mirah Curzer instructed Decide Ann E. Scherzer.
Hemphill’s condominium, close to the Empire State Constructing, was outfitted with quite a few surveillance cameras, and investigators have recovered pictures exhibiting dozens, if not a whole lot, of different girls, a lot of them bare and blindfolded, Curzer mentioned.
Investigators additionally discovered a whole lot of bullets and high-capacity magazines, and a considerable amount of medicine, together with heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, and fentanyl, prosecutors mentioned.
Hemphill met the six girls by web sites, together with some focusing on “sugar daddy” preparations for ladies searching for rich romantic companions, Curzer mentioned.
He instructed the ladies he was into position play and dominance and supplied them massive sums of cash in change for intercourse and companionship, although he ended up not paying a number of the girls or giving them faux money as a substitute, Curzer mentioned.
As Hemphill acquired to know the ladies, he satisfied them to confide their previous sexual traumas, which he then intentionally reenacted as he assaulted them, Curzer mentioned. He took benefit of some victims’ inexperience, the prosecutor mentioned, or crossed boundaries that victims had clearly articulated.
Hemphill is accused of tricking victims into ingesting substances that rendered them unable to struggle again, utilizing handcuffs and different restraints on them, wrapping their heads and faces with duct tape, slapping and punching them, and torturing them with a cattle prod and shock collar.
Hemphill stored one sufferer shackled to a mattress for hours whereas she begged him to let her go, Curzer mentioned.
Hemphill’s alleged conduct is “truly shocking to the conscience,” and he “has made clear that he has no regard for the law or the courts,” Curzer mentioned.
To maintain girls quiet, Hemphill boasted about connections to regulation enforcement and arranged crime, prosecutors mentioned, and claimed that as a result of the ladies had accepted provides of cash, it was them who could be arrested.
Hemphill is charged with bribing a witness and, in accordance with prosecutors, drew up a contract during which he agreed to pay a lady $2,000 in change for dropping a criticism she filed with police. He’s additionally accused of forcing some victims to file movies during which they acknowledged that that they had consented to being abused.
“The power imbalance in his predatory acts could not be more clear,” Bragg instructed reporters. “He wielded his law degree and money as both sword and shield, coercing and silencing survivors.”
The arraignment occurred down the corridor from disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s rape retrial.
Scherzer ordered Hemphill to stay jailed with out bail after prosecutors raised considerations that his predicament, mixed together with his wealth and connections — together with a historical past of philanthropy and household actual property holdings — might give him the means and incentive to flee the nation.
Hemphill’s lawyer, a public defender assigned to signify him a minimum of by his arraignment, had urged Scherzer to maneuver him to a rehabilitation facility to take care of substance abuse points.
Scherzer dominated that, given the actual fact sample laid out by prosecutors, “including efforts to dissuade by force and threats to witnesses from testifying against him,” jailing him was the one method to make sure Hemphill would return to court docket.
Hemphill’s alleged habits, the decide mentioned, “reveals his extent to which he’s prepared to go to guard himself from dealing with these prices.”
