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Andrew Green leaves County Court after his arraignment March 28, 2016.

(Douglass Dowty | ddowty@syracuse.com)

Andrew Green

Syracuse, NY -- Months after being raped a third time, a 15-year-old girl drank herself into a stupor before nearly dying in a creek, she said.

She went down to the water with her best friend. She drank two more bottles of beer she pulled out of a paper bag.

The only thing she remembers after that is being dragged out of the creek by her friend. She woke up in a hospital with a 0.14 blood-alcohol content.

She had been talking to God and wanted to die, her friend told her later. She said God was waiting for her on the other side of the creek in some purple flowers.

"I knew I had to save you or I'd lose my very best friend," her friend said.

That was rock-bottom for the teenage girl, who was raped by a U.S. Air Force colonel three times in DeWitt and Manlius in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said.

Andrew Green, 50, of Jamesville, admitted to one count of third-degree rape for having sex with the underage girl in May 2015. He was sentenced today to 6 months in jail and a decade on probation.

Green had been stationed at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome. He was placed on special assignment, then retired after being charged with rape.

The girl shared her harrowing experiences during sentencing today before state Supreme Court Justice John Brunetti. Her statement did not affect the punishment: Green had been promised the 6-month jail sentence before he pleaded guilty.

Though Green did not force the girl into sex, her account showed exactly why it's the responsibility of the adult not to have sex with a child, prosecutor Jeremy Cali said.

Today, the girl was called up to speak to the judge about what happened to her. She clutched several pages of hand-written notes and spoke very quickly at first, leading the judge to ask her to slow down.

She described what she sensed from her point of view:

At school, people laughed, threw her disgusting looks and turned away, she said. Many of her friends disappeared. "It was like I had a big, bright sign above my head," she said.

Rumors were passed around the whole school, she said. Everyone seemed to have an opinion. Some called her vulgar names.

She left school for the remainder of a school year. But that meant she stayed in her bedroom most of the time.

The worst were the panic attacks: it felt like she was dying. She'd get a short breath and shake uncontrollably. She'd lie on the floor, waiting for it to pass.

She was living behind a brick wall, she said. Everything was behind that wall.

It led to her breakdown this summer at the creek. She called a friend after starting to drink so she wouldn't be alone.

Since then, things are still difficult but have gotten better, she said.

"More people have spoken to me," she said. "They're still rude, but at least they speak to me. There are new rumors, and people still talk about old ones."

The girl's mother in court today accused Green of grooming her daughter for sex. "He chose to prey upon my little girl for his own sick purposes," she said, her hands trembling in court.

The mother is not being identified to protect the identity of the girl. The mother said the bullying, panic attacks and trust issues have changed her daughter.

"This has tainted things that are supposed to be beautiful and special between two people," the mother said, tears in her eyes.

For his part, Green apologized to the family. He said his own wife tried to commit suicide after finding out. "Thankfully, she survived," he said.

Green said he betrayed the victim's family "in ways I will probably never understand."

With that, Brunetti sentenced Green to his jail term at the Jamesville Correctional Facility.

Green will be rated a Level 1 sex offender -- meaning he is the lowest risk of re-offending -- and will not appear in the searchable sex offender registry. Cali acknowledged that there were no grounds to increase Green's sex offender level under law.