By Rich Bockmann
The prosecutor in the rape trial of the Rev. Phillip Joubert, pastor of the Community Baptist Church in Bayside, told a Queens Supreme Court jury Monday that testimony submitted by his daughter was enough to find him guilty of sexually abusing her.
Joubert, 50, is accused of raping his then-13-year-old daughter at his Bayside home in the summer of 2009. She took the stand last week to give evidence against her father.
“Her testimony alone proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he raped her,” Assistant District Attorney Lauren Parson said during Monday’s summations.
Joubert is charged with rape, incest, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. If convicted on the top count, first-degree rape, he could face up to 25 years in prison, the Queens district attorney’s office said.
Joubert’s daughter said she and her twin brother spent most of that summer away from their Norwalk, Conn., home while they stayed with their father in Bayside to attend Bible camp.
During that time, she said, her father would walk in on her as she showered and touch her inappropriately. One night some time between July 25 and Aug. 2, she testified, Joubert came into her third-floor bedroom as she laid asleep on the bottom bunk of her bed. She said her father climbed on top of her, held her wrists down and struck her several times, then pulled her clothes down and raped her.
“I was just laying there because I gave up because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop it,” she said last week.
Parson told the jury that the young woman’s testimony should be enough for them to return a guilty verdict.
In a written statement given to Detective Shari McAuliffe of the NYPD Queens Special Victims Squad when he was arrested Nov. 24, 2009 Joubert said his daughter came into his first-floor bedroom one night and climbed into his bed and that he touched her vagina only after she touched his penis.
But he denied having had intercourse with her.
During opening arguments, Joubert’s lawyer, Philip Russell, said his client was in a “weakened condition” when he wrote the statement due to his Type-2 diabetes. But McAuliffe said Joubert seemed fine when she arrested him and that he was medically cleared by EMS personnel, but conceded a blood-sugar test had not been administered.
“If he were really having a diabetic emergency as the defense claims … I submit he would not have sat down and put pen to paper as he did,” Parson said to the jury in her closing arguments. “It’s not her word against his. You have corroborating evidence.”
Joubert’s daughter returned home to Norwalk a few weeks later, and on the night of Nov. 14, Joubert struck her twice when he found his apartment messy. The young woman told her mother that night that during her stay her father had abused her sexually and her mother decided to wait three days until Joubert left for a trip to Israel to contact the authorities.
The mother and daughter traveled to Queens, where the young woman initially told McAuliffe that her father had touched her inappropriately, but then modified her story and told the detective that he had raped her.
During summations, Parsons said a doctor who examined the young woman in Queens testified the young girl suffered a “completely healed hymenal transection consistent with penile penetration.”
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
