A 43-year-old New Orleans man averted his trial by pleading guilty on Monday (Aug. 15) to molesting a 7-year-old girl two years ago.
Ulysses Maxwell pleaded guilty as charged to sexual battery of a juvenile under age 13 and cyberstalking, and received a 25-year prison sentence. He also will have to register as sex offender for the rest of his life after he’s released from prison.
“We as a society should not tolerate predators of our own species,” Judge Danyelle Taylor of the 24th Judicial District Court told Maxwell.
According to witnesses in the case, the victim was sleeping at her grandmother’s home on the West Bank in early 2014, and Maxwell was there at the time. He invited the victim into the kitchen, sat her on an ice chest and told her to close her eyes to play a game.
When she realized that Maxwell was sexually abusing her, she opened her eyes and began to cry, leading Maxwell to give her a candy bar. The victim told her grandmother, but she did not report the incident to anyone.
Several months later, the victim was watching a television show about child sexual predators and asked her mother if should could tell her anything. The mother said she could, and the child disclosed the abuse, leading the mother to notify the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The victim’s biological father and her mother’s boyfriend at the time, meanwhile, sought Maxwell out and beat him up.
Maxwell in turn sent a threatening text message to the boyfriend’s cellular phone, telling him, “You know yall should have killed me now my turn. You a died man.” [sic] That text message served as the basis for the cyberstalking charge.
Judge Taylor sentenced Maxwell to 25 years for the sexual battery, to be served without the benefit of probation, parole or suspended sentence. She sentenced Maxwell to six months for the cyberstalking and ran it concurrently with the 25 years.
Maxwell had been scheduled to stand trial this week for the offenses and faced 25 years to 99 years had he been convicted of the sexual battery. Through his public defender, however, he appeared in court Monday morning and offered to plead guilty as charged to both offenses.
Assistant District Attorneys Blair Constant and Rhonda Goode-Douglas prosecuted the case.
