Jelani Maraj, the brother of rap icon Nicki Minaj, was sentenced to 25 years to life on Monday after being convicted of raping his 11-year-old stepdaughter in 2017, reports Pitchfork.

State Supreme Court Judge Robert McDonald handed down the sentence in a Long Island courtroom Monday morning more than two years after the three-week trial found Maraj guilty of predatory sexual assault against a child and endangering the welfare of a child.

Maraj has long-claimed the case was an attempt by his ex-wife to extort $25 million from his famous sister, but the trial swung against him when his stepdaughter testified about what happened to her.

“He would call me his puppet and [say] I had no say in what he did to me. It was a Saturday morning. I had went to him to go say ‘Good morning.’ I had hugged him as usual. I went to go lie next to him as I usually do. When I did that, he told me to go close the door. He told me to take off my pants. Then he told me to come under the covers with him and he started caressing me,” the girl told the court about the abuse, which began in April 2015 and lasted until November 2015.

“We would have sex in his bedroom, in my bedroom, in the basement,” she added.

She went on to detail graphic sexual acts, including repeated anal rape, committed against her by Maraj in their Long Island home. She says he repeatedly threatened that she would be sent away from her mother if she ever told anyone about the rapes.

The situation got even worse when the girl's 8-year-old brother walked in on the assault. In a moving testimony, the girl said she felt grief about what her little brother saw and begged him not to tell anyone for fear that they both would be taken away from their mother.

Prosecutors submitted evidence that included a set of the victim's pajama pants that had Maraj’s alleged DNA on them.

In 2017, Minaj paid a $100,000 bond to free her brother from jail, and her support for Maraj has been a point of contention in the trial. His lawyer David Schwartz told Newsday at the time that the rap superstar supported him "100 percent." Their mother, Carol Maraj, called the charges unfair and said Minaj would testify in her brother's case — but she never did.

"The jurors admitted that they were swayed by TV, radio, the bloggers…listening to what the comments were. Can you tell me why juror misconduct was not proven today?… This is ridiculous," Carol Maraj said in October after a judge threw out an attempt by Schwartz to have the verdict struck down because of jury misconduct.

According to Schwartz, jurors were talking about the case incessantly, and his affidavit included a claim that one juror thought Maraj was guilty if Nicki Minaj did not testify in the case herself.

Carol-Maraj

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