LOCKPORT – The attorney for Christine Baez-Melendez said in Niagara County Court Wednesday that his client would rather go to jail than spend six years on probation for having sex with a teenage boy who fathered a child by her.
County Judge Sara Sheldon Farkas accepted the request and sentenced Baez-Melendez, 31, to a year in the County Jail on her guilty plea to a reduced charge of attempted third-degree rape, a statutory rape count pertaining to the boy’s age. Their daughter is 2 years old.
The boy is now 18, but started a sexual relationship with Baez-Melendez when he was 14 and both were living in Yonkers. Assistant District Attorney Lisa M. Baehre said the boy’s family moved to Lockport in 2011, but Baez-Melendez followed him and renewed the relationship, which resulted in her pregnancy.
County Judge Sara Sheldon Farkas accepted the request and sentenced Baez-Melendez, 31, to a year in the County Jail on her guilty plea to a reduced charge of attempted third-degree rape, a statutory rape count pertaining to the boy’s age. Their daughter is 2 years old.
The boy is now 18, but started a sexual relationship with Baez-Melendez when he was 14 and both were living in Yonkers. Assistant District Attorney Lisa M. Baehre said the boy’s family moved to Lockport in 2011, but Baez-Melendez followed him and renewed the relationship, which resulted in her pregnancy.