The MTV award-winning director of The Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly” video was sentenced to 50 years in prison for sexual assault Friday (July 26), according to The NY Daily News. This will be added to a 40-year sentence Aswad Ayinde received more than a year ago for similar charges regarding the sexual abuse of his daughters.
Ayinde has been under investigation for raping his daughters and forcing them to have his children. The 55-year-old fathered six children with his daughters between the 1980s and early 2000s, performing the deliveries himself and burying children that didn’t survive, according to the NY Daily News.
The 50-year prison term was given to Ayinde in a trial regarding the abuse of his now 35-year-old daughter. He was convicted of abusing her repeatedly from the time she was 8.
“I can’t describe how much you hurt me and my sisters,” his daughter told Ayinde in court, according to NorthJersey.com.
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Ayinde had nine children with his former wife Beverly and more with two other women in New York, according to court records. His former wife Beverly testified in a pre-trial hearing in 2010, saying that Ayinde believed the world was going to end. “He said the world was going to end, and it was just going to be him and his offspring and that he was chosen,” she said in the hearing.
Prosecutors said that Ayinde hoped to have a “pure” bloodline. He molested five of his daughters and fathered six children with them, the family and their attorney said, according to NorthJersey.com.
New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services faced scrutiny due to this case. Some of Ayinde’s crimes were reportedly committed while the family was under investigation by the agency. Some of the crimes were also committed after Ayinde acknowledged that he tried to take his children from a hospital where they were being held when the state had temporary custody of them in the early 2000s.
Ayinde beat the children using wooden boards and steel-toed boots, according to the NY Daily News report. Ayinde’s former wife Beverly says fear kept her from speaking to authorities. “I was afraid to ever accuse him of being demented or being a pedophile,” Beverly said in court in 2010. “I knew the word, but I wouldn’t dare use it because it would result in a beating.”
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In order to avoid further investigations, Ayinde reportedly moved the family often, at one point spending time in an abandoned funeral home in New Jersey.
When Ayinde moved to Brooklyn, he met and lived with Subhana Rahim, an attorney who reportedly lived with him from 2001 to 2004. Rahim says she discovered that Ayinde was abusing his children while she was pregnant with his child in 2002. “He was this successful artist who had worked with The Fugees,” Rahim told the paper. “I was shocked when he told me they were his daughters and that he’d been sleeping with them…I didn’t try to understand something so ridiculous.”
During the trial that ended Friday, Superior Court Judge Raymond Reddin, spoke with Ayinde about his actions.
“By 13, most fathers are taking their daughters to the park…teaching them to ride a bike,” he said, according to the NY Daily News. “You took her in the bedroom and repeatedly raped her to complete your disgusting, revolting fantasies.”
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After finding that Ayinde fathered other children with other women, his daughters contacted authorities in 2006.
“We found out we had other siblings, young siblings, and we had to put him to a stop,” one of his daughters said after the sentencing hearing, as per NorthJersey.com. “Even though we were healing, they could still fall victim.”
One of Ayinde’s daughters had four children with her father. Two have genetic illnesses, which doctors believe were likely related to incest. One of her children died in 2010 of spinal muscular atrophy. She was 9.
Ayinde faces further investigation for abusing his other daughters and could face more prison time pending the results of future trials. He faces at least three more trials regarding the sexual abuse of his daughters.
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