The man who sexually assaulted an autistic teenager was sentenced to prison on Wednesday.

Israel Wingo, 67, will serve 13.5 years in prison for sexually assaulting the autistic 17-year-old girl on the west side of Cleveland.

During his sentencing, Wingo insisted he is not a sexual predator. He will be required to register as a Tier II Sexual Offender.

Wingo then offered an apology to his victim, but she refused to look at him.

“She’s not the same, I mean she doesn’t communicate any more,” the victim’s mother said. “She’s crawled back into that shell that I worked so hard to get her out of.”

19 Action News has learned that Wingo is the father of the victim’s friend.

“Shame on you, she trusted you,” scolded Prosecutor Frankie Goldberg.

The crime came to light when Cleveland Rec worker William Morrison saw Wingo kissing the victim in front of Roberto Clemente Park. Morrison used his cell phone to take a picture of Wingo’s truck and license. Police investigated and found nude pictures of the girl and kiddie porn.

Wingo had previously entered a plea of guilty to six counts of pandering sexually-oriented matter involving a minor, one count of endangering children, one count of gross sexual imposition, one count of possessing criminal tools and one count of illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented material or performance.

Eddie Ricky Nealy learned Monday morning that his death sentence for the 1985 rape and killing Fresno teen Jody Lynn Wolfe will wait until after his trial for the alleged rape of a woman in 2001.

Nealy’s lawyers, Eric Green and Serita Rios, were hoping that prosecutor Steve Wright would dismiss the rape allegation in Fresno County Superior Court since a conviction would not affect Nealy’s death sentence, which had been scheduled to be pronounced Monday.

But Wright told Judge Arlan Harrell he plans to move forward with the rape case.

Harrell scheduled a Feb. 10 trial.

Outside court, Green said it was “utterly ridiculous” and “a waste of taxpayers’ money” for Wright to pursue the rape case.

But Wright said the alleged rape victim — like Jody — deserves justice, too.

In September, a jury of eight women and four men voted unanimously to give Nealy a death sentence after convicting him of rape and first-degree murder in the slaying of 14-year-old Jody, whose nude body was discovered floating in a southwest Fresno canal on Aug. 15, 1985.

An autopsy revealed she died of blunt-force trauma to the back of her head and had been dead at least two days.

The 2001 alleged rape victim is known as Martha H. in court papers. She testified at Nealy’s death penalty trial that he grabbed her as she left a party near Riverdale in southern Fresno County during the early hours of Sept. 20, 2001.

She testified Nealy dragged her to a nearby field and raped her at knifepoint behind a haystack. She said she then escaped and reported the incident to authorities.

Nealy escaped punishment at the time by leaving the area, authorities said. He was finally arrested in 2004 by law enforcement authorities in Los Angeles on drug possession and was sentenced to prison. While in prison, Nealy was linked to Jody’s rape and slaying through DNA evidence.

Nealy’s criminal history stretches back more than three decades. It includes arrests for corporal punishment of a child, robbery and grand theft in the 1980s.

He also was linked to the murder and sodomy of Mary Charlotte Barnett, 28, whose nude body was found in a field in southwest Fresno on July 20, 1988, according to court records.

Nealy was charged with Barnett’s murder in August 1991 while he was in Soledad prison serving a 16-year sentence for rape and sodomy, court records show. But he has never been convicted of the killing. The Fresno County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the murder case in October 1992 after witnesses back then declined to testify, court documents show.

The 20-year-old woman sat in the witness stand in a Jefferson Parish courtroom Tuesday (Nov. 19)and estimated for the jury that Darrell Tillery, a former friend of her mother’s, raped her more than 20 times during the course of a decade, starting when she was about 4. “He told me they have crazy people in the world, and ‘Why would you have sex with them when you can have sex with me’,” the woman testified, saying Tillery urged her to keep quiet about the abuse or he would go to jail.

She’s one of three women who accuse Tillery, 48, of sexually abusing them starting when they were young girls, crimes prosecutors date to the early 1990s. Tillery, of Avondale, is standing trial this week on three counts of aggravated rape and one count of sexual battery, all involving girls with whom he was acquainted. The women are not being identified.

If convicted of any of the aggravated rape charges, Tillery would face spending the rest of his life in prison, with no chance of probation, parole or suspended sentence. He could also face a sentence of 25 years to 99 years in prison if convicted of the sexual battery charge, which involves one of the rape victims. The jury was selected Tuesday, in 24th Judicial District Judge John Molaison’s court.

Tillery was indicted in June 2012 on charges of aggravated rape and sexual battery involving one of the women. Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Detective Robert Miles’ investigation widened after two more women came forward, accusing Tillery of raping them. Prosecutors then obtained another indictment charging Tillery with the additional aggravated rape charges.

One of those women, now 27, testified that she spoke up after reading a NOLA.com story about Tillery’s 2012 indictment. It was then, the woman said in soft-spoken tones, that she felt “relief he got caught.” She testified that Tillery began abusing her when she was 6 years old.

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