NORWICH – Convicted child sex trafficker Dean Sacco appeared in Chenango County Court Wednesday after a federal judge gave him life in prison to be sentenced to another five years for his crimes in the City of Norwich.
Sacco, 50, of Jersey City, and his co-defendant Linda O’Connor, 47, appeared in federal court in Binghamton yesterday and received lengthy sentences from U.S. Senior District Court Judge Thomas J. McAvoy.
O’Connor and Sacco were found guilty after a four week federal trial of child sex trafficking and producing child pornography along with other federal charges in the seven-count indictment.
Sacco, who denies having sex with the girl, received life in prison. O’Connor received 30 years.
Sacco received a additional five-year concurrent sentence from Chenango Supreme Court Judge Kevin M. Dowd after pleading guilty to first degree sexual abuse.
“He is a pedophile and he is a danger to the community and every child he comes in contact with. I don’t say this often, but it will be a great pleasure to the community to know that he will be removed for the rest of his days,” said District Attorney Joseph McBride.
Sacco made his own remarks to the court, saying, “I am offended that Mr. McBride would call me a pedophile,” explaining that he had always been honest about his attraction in a book he wrote in 1998.
The book, which was written while Sacco was serving a separate nine-year prison term, is called ‘American Desperado: An Autobiography of Failure and Dysfunction.’ In his book, Sacco admits that as a teenager he was sexual deviant and entered girls’ bedrooms, one of them his sister’s, and touched them.
Sacco said his encounter with the 12-year-old girl was coincidental and it was nothing more than “stupid little frivolous hugs and kisses that I did.”
Judge Dowd corrected Sacco on his remark, “It was more than hugs and kisses. It was oral sodomy,” he said.
The female victim, who is now 14, told police she was threatened if she refused to comply. The charges in the complaint took place between 2006 and 2007, when she was as young as 11.
The case, which was originally investigated by the Norwich Police Department, was taken over by the Federal Bureau of Investigation once it was learned that the victim was transported across state lines for the purposes of selling her for sex.
