Accused rapist Hugues Akassy, charged with raping Russian
tourist, portrays himself as irresistible ladies’ man
A creepy Casanova who’s accused of raping a woman in Riverside Park portrayed himself Thursday as an irresistible ladies’ man.
Smooth-talking Hugues Akassy tried to woo jurors in Manhattan by casting himself as a worldly seducer whose charms included an ample supply of pickup lines, wine and cheese and a firm grasp of “Sex and the City.”
The 43-year-old Frenchman is accused of raping a Russian tourist in Riverside Park and of forcing a woman to give him oral sex after she took him to the rooftop of her East Side apartment building in November 2007.
“All we do is just the oral things,” Akassy said he told the second Russian women. “Why don’t we just make love now?”
Akassy met the Russian women in Central Park when he saw her smoking a cigarette while he enjoyed a solo wine and cheese picnic.
“It’s a shame you try to destroy that beautiful body with a smoke,” Akassy said he told the Russian women.
While an injury will keep the Russian women from traveling to New York to testify, prosecutors have trotted out three other Russian women who said they were stalked and harassed by Akassy when his amorous advances were rejected.
“Her behavior was shallow,” Akassy said of the Manhattan lawyer whom he trashed as “rude, phony and a jerk” when she rejected him.
The ascot-wearing accused rapist insisted he’s a Romeo who worked as a globe-trotting journalist and had no trouble making Russian women friends all over Manhattan.
Sources have said he’s a homeless con man.
On the witness stand, Akassy told jurors about his love of Cabernet Sauvignon and recounted how he took one date past a spot in Central Park where a “Sex and the City” scene had been filmed.
In a French accent, he also said he has four degrees – including one in classical music – and that he regularly met women in the city’s museums.
At another point, he began reciting the lyrics of a French love song.
They were, Akassy said, used to woo one of the Russian women.
And when one romantic date hit a rough spot, he said, a Brazilian waitress started eying him.
” looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you look like Seal.’” Akassy said. “I found her to be much more interesting.”