GUILDERLAND — The rape that Franklin Casatelli was sentenced for on Monday was not his first rape, say a mother and daughter from Guilderland.

In the gallery throughout Casatelli’s trial was a woman who says her daughter was raped by him in 2009 when she was 14 years old and in the ninth grade at Guilderland High School. Casatelli would have been 18. Casatelli is from Guilderland and attended Guilderland schools, graduating in 2011.

The young woman, now 23, says her rape destroyed her high-school years and that it has taken her all this time to get her life back on track. Enterprise policy is to withhold the names of sexual-assault victims.

The Guilderland Police Department has an open case from 2010 involving an allegation of sexual assault against Franklin Casatelli, according to Curtis Cox, deputy chief of the Guilderland Police.

Cox said he could not confirm if Guilderland’s open case involves the same complainant with whom The Enterprise spoke. He cannot provide any additional information about it, he said, because it remains open.

The family from Guilderland first contacted the Guilderland Police in 2009, not 2010, and the case was handed off to the New York State Police.

“It was definitely 2010 when we got the call,” Cox said of the open case.

The young woman from the 2009 case says her then-boyfriend had been friends for years with Casatelli.

She called her then-boyfriend a “super-senior,” someone who was older and should already have graduated.

The 23-year-old woman has since become a licensed practical nurse. She says that, at the start of her high-school years, she did not like school very much, and often skipped classes. She “got caught up with the high-school life of having friends,” she said this week, and was “not really focused on school at all.”

She was “dating” — ”not really dating, but like high-school dating,” she clarified — a young man who “did a lot of drugs.” He died a few years ago of a heroin overdose, she said.

The young man told her at the time that Casatelli, his friend, could get her some “magic mushrooms.”

The incident

Casatelli phoned her to arrange to drop off the mushrooms at her house one evening, she told a New York State Police investigator in a deposition obtained by The Enterprise.

She went downstairs and out into her driveway to meet Casatelli, who had been driven there by another young man, apparently a friend of his.

It was about 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2009. Her mother was out at a meeting of a church group and was expected back at about 9:30 p.m. Her father was at home, watching TV in the family room.

The young men told her to get in the car, and Casatelli — known to everyone as “Frankie” — handed over the mushrooms and she gave him $30, according to her deposition. Then the car started moving.

“I was asking them to turn around, but they weren’t listening,” she told The Enterprise. She knew she wasn’t supposed to suddenly disappear from her home. She had no idea where the car was heading, and she had never met either of these people before.

They told her to stop talking, she said, and turned the music up loud so they could not hear her.

“I was trying to get out, but the doors were locked with childproof locks,” she told The Enterprise.

They seemed to think her fear was funny, she said.

“I remember texting my friends,” she said, “but they didn’t know what to do.”

In her deposition, the young woman said that, after she got home, she went online and spoke to a friend, telling her about the rape.

“I don’t even remember how long the car ride was, I just thought it was a long car ride. I remember it was snowing,” she said.

Eventually the car stopped at an apartment building, she said. “They parked the car, and I got out,” she said, adding, “I didn’t know where I was, but I didn’t know where to go.”

She recalled, “I remember there was like a snowbank that I had to go over.”

They went into a small apartment; the person who lived there, a friend of theirs, was playing Guitar Hero in the living area, she said in her deposition.

Casatelli took her into a bedroom next to the living area, she said in her deposition.

“I remember it was white sheets,” she told The Enterprise.

“And then he had sex with me,” she said. “And that was it.”

Her deposition is more detailed about what happened: He pulled out her hair extensions by tugging at her hair, “trying to control my head,” she wrote. He had sex with her vaginally without using a condom; he performed oral sex on her; he penetrated her anally with his fingers; and he made her perform oral sex on him.

Afterward, they went out into the living area, where he made her sit on his lap. The young men all smoked marijuana, but she refused. “It was like laughing and goofing off with the guys,” she told The Enterprise of the young men’s behavior.

After that, the same two people who had brought her to the apartment — Casatelli and his friend — brought her home, the deposition says.

She writes in the deposition that it was about 7:45 p.m. when they dropped her off in her driveway.

Her father, still in the family room, never knew she was gone, her mother told The Enterprise.

The aftermath

The young woman did not tell her family she was raped, at first.

Her mother noticed, she wrote in her deposition, that her daughter had had “excessive telephone usage on the night of January 29th” and, for that reason, asked her to give her her phone the next day, on Jan. 30.

The daughter was upset by this and “wasn’t behaving at all like herself, and I later recalled asking her, ‘Did something happen?’” the deposition says. Two days later, when the father decided to change the home’s computer password, the mother wrote, it sent their daughter “entirely over the edge.”

It was at that point, Feb. 1, that the mother sought help, she wrote, “especially as I could see she was cutting herself.”

The daughter’s behavior — panic attacks and self-harm — was something her mother had never seen before, she told The Enterprise.

That night, the mother brought her daughter to Ellis Hospital to be evaluated, and she wound up being admitted and staying there until the following Wednesday, Feb. 4.

Her mother did not learn about the events of Jan. 29 until Feb. 18, more than two weeks later.

That afternoon, the young woman made plans to be driven from Crossgates Mall to Franklin Casatelli’s home in McKownville, to talk with him about what to do if she were pregnant. “I didn’t want to be alone with him, but felt it necessary to discuss the possibility of my being pregnant,” she wrote in her deposition.

He told her that he had $3,000 that could be used for an abortion, she wrote in the deposition, but would not give her money to buy an at-home pregnancy test.

She explained to him that abortion was not an option for her, and that, if she were pregnant, she would choose to give birth, she wrote.

She was at his home for about an hour, she wrote.

Far from just wanting to talk, he wanted to do “sexual things” again at his house, she told The Enterprise, and had just exposed his penis when his mother walked in the room.

She got a ride back to the mall, where she had a panic attack and severe abdominal pain, she said. “Unable to move, I was lying on the floor of the restroom” at the mall, and had her friend, another girl, call her mother to come and get her.

That evening, the young woman spoke on the phone with her older sister, who lives in the Capital Region but not at the family home, and told her she had been raped. The sister brought over a pregnancy test and convinced her younger sister that their parents needed to be told, according to the deposition by the woman who says she was raped.

Her mother called police, who told her that the first step should be to go to the hospital, which the family did. The young woman was examined. The next morning, she was put in touch with the State Police, “as I was uncertain of the location where the rape took place,” her deposition says.

The young woman was not pregnant, it turned out.

Casatelli’s lawyer, mother

Contacted by phone this week, Casatelli’s mother, Felicia Ballard, who also attended his entire trial in December and his sentencing last week, was asked about a claim that a young woman was making today, that she had been raped nine years ago by Casatelli, when she was 14.

Ballard replied, her tone measured, “I don’t think so.”

She said she knew nothing about any such incident.

Attorney James Tyner, who represented Casatelli in his recent trial for raping a University at Albany student in her dorm room while she slept, said on the telephone last week, “Obviously it’s tough to have thoughts about allegations I know nothing about. You’re the first person to tell me about this.

“I have represented Frank for a year and a half, and have received his entire criminal history, which was provided to me by the district attorney,” Tyner said.

“My thoughts are that, whoever is making this statement, is a flat-out lie,” he said.

Tyner said that, if any investigation had ever taken place, which he had never heard of, he guessed that “the police concluded that that did not occur.”

The car’s driver

Reached by phone in another state, the young man who drove the car on the night of Jan. 29, 2009 said, “I don’t put the accusations past him. He’s not a great person.”

Asked why he remains friendly with someone he considers to be “not a great person,” the man said that he has seen Casatelli at his most vulnerable and broken and always felt sympathy for him. He said he now feels badly about whatever role he may have played, as a friend, in supporting Casatelli and discounting accusations against him.

He said of the night of Jan. 29, “What I saw didn’t seem forced, so it was easier for me to believe his side of the story.” The activity looked consensual to him, and he never gave it any thought,  he said.

“I can’t precisely remember if she was trying to go for the door, but if she had made any sounds or gotten my attention in any way, I would have stopped the car,” he said. He has kicked Casatelli out of his car in the past for having drugs, he added.

The driver said that, after they arrived at the apartment, Casatelli and the young woman went into a bedroom, and he doesn’t know what happened in the bedroom.

He messaged the victim immediately after speaking with The Enterprise, reaching out, he told The Enterprise, in hopes that she can find “peace.”

He said, too, that he has struggled all his life with interpreting other people’s emotions, but that he didn’t think that this had colored his impression of that evening.

The driver added, “Maybe in hindsight I can see how she would feel pressured.” Referring to Casatelli, he said, “He’s always had problems with boundaries, in every aspect of his life.”

The car’s driver also told The Enterprise the name of another young woman he thought had made a similar claim against Casatelli years ago.

The Enterprise contacted that woman, and she said Casatelli had never touched her.

Police response

Trooper Mark Cepiel, spokesman for the New York State Police Troop G, said last week that there had been a year-long investigation of a claim of sexual assault involving Franklin Casatelli. “It was a lengthy investigation, and, at the end, charges were not lodged,” he said.

“Many people were interviewed and questioned about the case in total, and that would include him as well,” Cepiel said of Casatelli.

It’s not the job of the State Police to act as a jury, Cepiel said, but “as long as it’s reasonable to assume, based on evidence, that a crime has been committed, that’s when we would lodge charges.”

Cepiel noted that, if sexual contact were proven to have taken place with someone who was 14 years old, charges could have been brought since the age of consent in New York State is, and has been for years, 17.

Since police weren’t notified until long after the rape, there was no physical evidence, such as semen, from a rape kit.

The investigation

A friend whom the young woman had texted on the night of Jan. 29, 2009 told someone else, and that person called the Guilderland Police that night. The Guilderland Police then called the young woman who now says she was raped by Casatelli, but, at the time, according to the young woman’s deposition, she told the officer that there had been no rape and that her friends were trying to get her in trouble. The officer asked her repeatedly about it, and she repeatedly denied that there had been any rape, her deposition says.

Omar Snow was the State Police investigator assigned to the case. After 25 years with the State Police, Snow recently resigned after confessing that he’d lied to investigators about his bank account; he said, in court papers, that he had been trying to hide from his wife that he was giving money to his mistress.

Snow was the one who in 2009 spoke with the victim and her mother, took the family’s depositions, and helped try to get a recording of Casatelli admitting on the phone to having raped the young woman.

Contacted last week for his unofficial impressions at the time, Snow said that Casatelli had “lawyered up right away” and could not be questioned.

He said that sheets and the victim’s clothes had been washed, and that there was basically no physical evidence available by the time the rape accusation reached him, more than two weeks after the event.

The people interviewed by the State Police “were more siding with Frank, than her,” Snow said.

Not only did she initially tell the Guilderland Police that there had been no rape, Snow said, but she also, at one point, after telling him about the rape, denied it, saying that she had made it up and that it had never happened.

“But I knew it did: She was 14 years old, and, for whatever purpose, she just didn’t want to deal with it,” he said this week.

Later, as she began to trust Snow, he said, the young woman told him about the rape in detail.

Snow went to the Albany County District Attorney’s Office, at one point, to ask if there was anything he had missed that could help bring a case, and they told him, “We can’t do anything with this,” he recalled. First of all, she was inconsistent, and then drugs were involved, Snow said.

Snow believed the young woman was raped, he said.

“I believe Frank sexually assaulted her,” he said. “Victims are scared, especially when they’re that young. They don’t know what to say. Once she got comfortable with me, everything came out.”

Of the young woman’s mother, he said, “When her mother learned about this latest one [referring to the UAlbany rape], I think she wanted some kind of justice, some vindication, something.”

Snow said of the young man who drove the car on Jan. 29 that he spoke with him twice and found him to be an unreliable witness;  his story changed substantially from the first to the second time, he said. The first time, the young man said nothing happened that evening and the door to the bedroom had been open the whole time. The second time, Snow said, the young man said he was “in a feud” with Casatelli and “kind of indicated something did happen” but would not provide the investigator with any details.

The young woman today

The young woman’s high-school years were changed by the events of Jan. 29, she says.

A girl she didn’t know, who was friends with Casatelli and his friends, came up in the hallway and asked her if she had had sex with Casatelli.

She felt that everyone knew and thought she was “a liar, or like a slut,” she said.

She had “lots of guy friends,” so everyone assumed she was “doing stuff” with lots of guys, she said.

She stopped talking to the super-senior who had been her boyfriend. He “believed his friend, Frankie, instead of me,” she said. “Saying that I liked it and stuff.”

Her mother took her to a drug-counseling outpatient group almost daily at Four Winds, although, her mother told The Enterprise, her daughter later told her that she thought it had been “a joke” because “it didn’t address the rape.”

The young woman had to repeat a lot of classes, “and it just really messed with my whole school life,” and I lost most of my friends after that, she said.

In 10th grade, she said, school officials knew she had struggled the year before, and put her in a program called Focus, with smaller classes and more help, she told The Enterprise, “for kids who don’t do well in high school and don’t want to be there.”

In 11th grade, she went to the Board of Cooperative Educational Services Vocational Technical Center, for cosmetology. “So I only had to be at my regular high school for half the day, during the last two years of high school.”

This was nice, she said, because it allowed her to be with students from other high schools, who didn’t know about what had happened.

She worked as a hairdresser for years. Now, she said, she is a licensed practical nurse and is in school studying to become a registered nurse.

“So now I’m super book-smart, and my past is pretty behind me now,” she said.

However, ever since the event in 2009, Casatelli has continued to telephone her periodically, she and her mother both say. He called often at first, telling her that “it never happened.”

Back then, on the advice of State Police, she and her mother bought tape recorders and tried to get him to admit to the rape on the phone, but were never able to.

Casatelli has continued to call from prison, both women say. They have no idea why he even still has her phone number, or what he wants to say.

Her number is unchanged, from the one he called all those years ago, to ask her about mushrooms.

Casatelli had been imprisoned on a drug charge and was released just 10 days before he raped the University at Albany student.

The 2009 victim had a message once from prison saying something like, “The person who tried to contact you doesn’t have money to contact you,” and she vacillated about what to do. It’s impossible to call someone in prison, she said.

She and her current boyfriend decided, together, she said, to put money into Casatelli’s account so that he would be able to call. They wanted to know what he wanted: Did he want to apologize? Tell her something her high-school boyfriend said before dying?

The last call from Casatelli to date was, she said, about a week after his December trial for rape.

The recent calls, while she is in school trying to concentrate on her studies, have upset the young woman, both she and her mother said. She has had to increase her anti-anxiety medication as a result.

Her mother today

Her mother attended Casatelli’s rape trial in December and was at his sentencing on Monday, Feb. 5.

He was sentenced to 37 years on two felony charges, of first-degree rape and second-degree burglary as a sexually motivated felony.

She feels bad that, with the 2009 incident, she did not learn what had happened until evidence had been destroyed and that police had so little to go on.

Of the effects on their family, the mother said last week, “This thing just went on and on,” involving counseling and medication for her daughter and counseling for herself as well.

“We owe the SUNY student such a debt of gratitude, that she had the courage and determination to get to the point that he’s unable to damage further lives,” the mother stated.

After the sentencing last Monday, the mother told The Enterprise that she had let her daughter know that Casatelli would be going to state prison for 37 years.

Her daughter’s response?

She said, according to the mother, that “37 is her new favorite number.”