Mike Deak

(Bridgewater, N.J.) Courier News

RARITAN, N.J. — A state appellate court has rejected a teen's defense that watching a pornographic movie two years before so traumatized him that he molested a woman who was entering a gym with her three children.

If the teen, identified in court papers only by the initials T.T. because he is younger than 18, had been an adult, he would have been found guilty of fourth-degree sexual contact and third-degree endangering the welfare of a child, judges on the appellate panel wrote, But because the boy was a minor, he was ruled a delinquent in the April 1, 2013, incident.

T.T.'s lawyers had argued that he had been improperly ruled a delinquent. The teen also had been charged with attacking women in two other incidents in nearby Manville, N.J., at a drugstore and in a pedestrian tunnel.

The teen, wearing a maroon hoodie, came up from behind the woman in Raritan, grabbed her with both hands in the genital area and began "humping" her, according to court paperwork. During questioning at Raritan Borough police headquarters with his father present, T.T. admitted that he had grabbed a woman near her stomach area and rubbed himself against her buttocks.

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He also said that when he first saw the woman, he remembered a porn film he had watched two years earlier.

The woman's two youngest children, age 7 and 4, froze while her 9-year-old yelled, "Get off my mom" and pursued T.T. when he ran away. At a hearing before a family court judge, the woman identified T.T. and said one of her children now views everyone wearing a hoodie as a bad man.

The children do not want to go near the gym where the attack occurred, the woman said.

Probation in a residential program was continued for T.T., and he was ordered to register under the state's Megan's Law because of the charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

In a separate complaint, T.T. had been charged with running behind a woman March 20, 2013, in the parking lot of a Manville drugstore and grabbing her back pocket. When the woman screamed, he ran off.

On June 15, 2013, T.T. was accused of approaching a third woman in a pedestrian tunnel in Manville, grabbing her around the waist and rubbing against her.

On those charges, the teen was placed on three years' probation and ordered to enter a residential program for teenagers who had committed sexual offenses, a program that "he desperately needed," the justices wrote.

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