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Union Beach man who molested a brother and sister gets 3 years in prison

Asbury Park Press - 3/5/2021

FREEHOLD — A girl repeatedly molested by a 47-year-old Union Beach man was too distraught to face him during a Zoom sentencing hearing Friday, her mother told a judge.

But the girl’s older brother, also molested by the same man, had a mouthful to say about him.

“Being around Lou is toxic,’’ the young man said of Louis Accardi at his sentencing hearing before Superior Court Judge Ellen Torregrossa-O’Connor.

“It’s like inhaling a toxin powerful enough to make you feel empty, hollow and worthless,’’ the young man said.

Torregrossa-O'Connor sentenced Accardi Friday to three years in prison.

Accardi on Nov. 10 pleaded guilty to molesting the young man, admitting he forcibly stuck his hands down the victim’s pants and grabbed his penis sometime in 2016 or 2017.

Accardi also pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child, admitting he laid in bed naked with the young man’s younger sister and touched her breasts, buttocks and vagina sometime in 2019, when the girl was 16.

Torregrossa-O’Connor, however, said Friday that was not the only time Accardi molested the girl.

“She was repeatedly subjected to that assault, that privacy intrusion, that humiliation,’’ the judge said of the teen victim.

Danielle Zanzuccki said the girl was repeatedly molested over the course of six months.

Noting a close relationship between the defendant and his victims, Torregrossa-O’Connor said Accardi “abused their trust.’’

“I hope that (the young man) and his sister are able to overcome all of their demons that I have caused them,’’ Accardi, a U.S. Air Force veteran and electrician without no prior criminal record, said before the judge handed down the sentence.

“I’m so sorry to all of you,’’ he aid.

The judge said she “struggled’’ with the idea of imposing only a three-year prison term on Accardi, which is what he was promised in a plea bargain, but she would go along with it.

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Accardi could have faced up to 10 years in prison without the plea bargain.

The judge ordered Accardi to have no future contact with the victims. When he is released from prison, he will have to register his whereabouts with police, under Megan’s Law. He also will be on parole supervision for life.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues, unsolved mysteries and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Union Beach man who molested a brother and sister gets 3 years in prison

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