EMPORIUM — A former Emporium resident and one-time “America’s Most Wanted” fugitive has been sentenced to 15 to 40 years in prison for the rape of a five-year-old boy, Cameron County’s district attorney reports.
Sentencing of Joseph Chapman, 32, took place Tuesday morning in Cameron County Court.
Outside the courthouse, District Attorney Paul Malizia told The Era he was “extremely relieved” by the sentence, calling it a necessary bookend in a case that included an earlier mistrial and saw the young male victim forced to relive his trauma in court no less than twice.
Malizia said he expected the victim and his family would also be relieved by the prison term, saying it appeared their healing had already begun following Chapman’s September 2014 conviction.
The DA said relatives reported the victim, now a teenager, responded to Chapman’s guilty verdict in the case with “the biggest smile of his life.”
Chapman was found guilty of indecent deviate sexual intercourse with a child, a first-degree felony; and statutory sexual assault, a second-degree felony.
The charges, along with others withdrawn by prosecutors due to a lack of evidence, stem from Chapman’s sexual encounters with a four or five-year-old boy in 2005 and 2006, while Chapman was reportedly married to the child’s mother.
The victim, 13-years-old at the time of the trial, testified to the details of the crime and said the
incident was his first memory in life.
After hearing testimony from the victim, experts and law enforcement officials, the jury returned its guilty verdict on both counts following deliberations that lasted only 15 minutes, according to previously published reports. Chapman was first tried on the charges in January of last year, with that trial ending in a hung jury.
Following his subsequent conviction at retrial, Chapman’s sentencing hearing, originally scheduled for last month, had to be postponed after Chapman refused to leave his cell and appear in court to receive the judgement.
Pre-sentence investigations by the court also saw him labeled a sexually violent offender and Tuesday’s prison sentence carries with it a lifetime Megan’s Law registration requirement, attorney Malizia said.
Prior to being charged in this case, and while jailed for violating the terms of his probation in a separate 2002 statutory sexual assault case, Chapman escaped from a work detail at the McKean County Prison in Smethport and spent five years on the run before being recognized by a neighbor in Arkwright, N.Y., following Chapman’s appearance on “America’s Most Wanted.”
The 2002 statutory sexual assault case and probation violation later saw Chapman sentenced to four to 10 years in prison.
It was not immediately clear if Tuesday’s prison sentence will be in addition to that four to 10 year term or run concurrently.
But Malizia was unequivocal in saying Chapman deserved a lengthy period of time behind bars, claiming the long delays and dramatic turns seen in these cases have prolonged the judicial process and exacerbated the impacts on victims.
