QUEENSBURY -- A Schenectady man who gave crack cocaine to a 14-year-old boy before he repeatedly sexually abused him in Lake Luzerne was sentenced Wednesday to 44 years in state prison.
Roopnarain “Joe” Dukharan was convicted of nine felonies and two misdemeanors after a February trial in which a Warren County jury found he repeatedly sexually abused the boy and traded crack cocaine to drug addicts he brought from Schenectady to Lake Luzerne to clear a piece of land he had purchased.
He had contact with the teen because the youth offered to work for him, helping to clear the property. Instead, Dukharan, 58, gave him drugs and repeatedly sodomized him over a several-month period.
The boy’s mother told Warren County Judge John Hall that the assaults did significant harm to her son, who is far less trusting than he was.
“It’s very hard not to be angry but we’re all working on it every day,” she told Hall.
Warren County Assistant District Attorney Emilee Davenport, who prosecuted the case, asked for the maximum prison sentence of 67 years, saying Dukharan is “someone who victimizes people when they are at their most vulnerable.”
Davenport said Dukharan “victimized this child, stole this child’s innocence.”
She said Dukharan would give the workers crack every three hours or so as they worked.
“He used them as slave labor,” she said. “He brought people who were addicted to drugs from Schenectady to Warren County and exchanged drugs for their work.”
Dukharan was convicted of felony counts of criminal sexual act, criminal sale of a controlled substance to a child and labor trafficking. He will have to serve nearly 36 years before becoming eligible for parole.
His lawyer, James Tyner, painted Dukharan as a hard-working man who emigrated from Guyana and built a delivery business in New York City before moving to Schenectady. Numerous people wrote character reference letters to the court on his behalf, he said.
Tyner said the conviction would be appealed, and that Dukharan was not offering a statement in light of that appeal.
Dukharan also faces felony charges of criminal sale of a controlled substance in Schenectady County for unrelated crack cocaine sales during a police investigation there.
