Mario Caruso also sexually assaulted her 9-year-old friend. Any sense of security the girl felt with Caruso being convicted and deemed a violent sex offender was shattered, her father said, when Judge Albert Lorenzo permitted him to move back next door in 2011, months after being released from jail.
“Every time she hears him, every time she sees him, she just wishes she could make him disappear,” her father told The Journal News. Because his daughter is a sexual assault victim, the newspaper is not identifying him.
The father said he’s amazed that a Level 3 sex offender, the category reserved for those most likely to reoffend, was permitted back next door. “It just blows me away,” he said. “She has just lost faith in the system. It seems like she was just put on the shelf and forgotten.”
The girl, now 19, is suing Caruso for the assault and moving back next door, alleging he disregarded the “substantial probability” it could cause her “severe emotional distress.” She can hear him play music, sees his car drive by and fears when she’s outside, he’s watching, her father said.
The victim wrote to the court, making it clear she didn’t want Caruso returning, describing how he showed no remorse and it “will induce panic when I hear any car in his driveway or hear his garage door open or hear him talking to his wife or mother.”