The discovery of two cell phone videos showing a Yonkers man engaged in sexual activity with a young girl led to criminal charges alleging that he sexually abused her on multiple occasions over a five-year period, a Westchester prosecutor said at the start of the man's trial.
Assistant District Attorney Owein Levin called the video images on Rolando Ruiz's cell phone "unexpected, traumatic and horrible" as he delivered his opening statement Friday, Oct. 2. But they were just the "tip of the iceberg" he told jurors of the abuse the girl was subjected to.
Ruiz, 40, was a maintenance worker at Community Baptist Church in Yonkers when he was arrested in April 2025 after the person who saw the videos reported them to police. He is accused of sexually
abusing the girl when she was younger than 13 beginning in 2020.
In her brief opening statement, defense lawyer Joanna Karlitz reminded jurors that what Levin laid out for them was not evidence. She urged jurors to keep an open mind and carefully assess the credibility of key witnesses, suggesting some might have motives to falsely accuse her client.
"Maybe you believe something happened but is he, Mr. Ruiz, the offender?" she said.
Levin said the videos - one taken in March 2024 and the other in December 2024 - show Ruiz forcing the girl to perform oral sex on him. The prosecutor told jurors they will know it is Ruiz on the videos because the voice making vulgar comments to the girl on the second one will match the voice they hear when the police interview of Ruiz is played for them.
The interview will be key evidence, Levin said, as Ruiz's "words will betray him, they'll undermine anything he says."
He said that Ruiz gave his cell phone number as the same one on which the videos were found and a forensic review determined had taken the videos. And when a Yonkers sex crime detective asked Ruiz during the interview if he had ever recorded himself forcing the girl into sexual activity, Ruiz told her "No." But then he told her he wouldn't lie, there had been one time but he insisted he hadn't forced her, Levin said.
Ruiz is charged with predatory sexual assault of a child, which carries a possible life sentence in prison, and course of sexual conduct against a child, punishable by at least five years in prison and up to 25 years. He also faces lesser felony charges of use of a child in a sexual performance and possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child, stemming from the two videos.
Ruiz has been held without bail since his arrest. The trial before Westchester Judge Robert Prisco resumes Monday.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Trial starts for Yonkers man accused of repeated sexual abuse of child
