Written by: Fruzsina Molnar

After being convicted in November of raping his ex-girlfriend Seemona Sumasar and subsequently framing her for robbery to cover it up, Jerry Ramrattan was sentenced on Wednesday to 32 years in prison.

In March 2009, Ramrattar, 39, had bound Sumasar, 36, with duct tape before raping her at her home in Queens, NY. To throw off investigators after Sumasar pressed charges against him, Ramrattar implicated Sumasar in a series of fake armed robberies by hiring and coaching fake witnesses and planting a bullet. The bogus witnesses’ elaborately fabricated testimonies led to Sumasar’s arrest and seven-month stint in prison, during which she lost her business, her home, and was unable to see her 12-year-old daughter.

At the sentencing hearing, Sumasar told her attacker, “You’re evil and you’re a sociopath and you need help. Maybe I’m going through this for a reason, that reason being that someone needs to put a stop to you and your madness.”

In November, a jury found Ramrattan guilty of over ten charges, including first-degree rape, first-degree conspiracy, first-degree perjury, and third-degree tampering with a witness. This week, Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter gave Ramrattan the maximum sentence of 32 years.

Buchter called Ramrattan “a diabolical conniver and sinister manipulator” who thought himself above the law. The law itself failed the victim in this case; Nassau County police didn’t fully investigate the charges that Sumasar robbed the two false witnesses at gunpoint. If they had, they would have found that there was video surveillance showing her alibi at the time of one of the alleged robberies. Instead, they threw her in jail on a $1 million bail, and, she says, “I didn’t know what I was charged with until the arraignment.”

“As a result,” said Buchter, “a rape victim was framed by her rapist. She was victimized by the rapist and then again by the criminal justice system.”

Sumasar said in an interview with The New York Times, “From the beginning I was presumed guilty–not innocent. I felt like I never had a chance. I can never have faith in justice in this country again.”

Ramrattan had driven the fake witnesses past Sumasar’s car and home and showed them photos of her so that they could identify her to the police. He purported to be a private investigator and ran an online business called Most Wanted Inc., and he is an avid fan of television crime shows such as Law & Order and CSI. Sumasar is a former analyst for Morgan Stanley and restaurant owner.