Kevin McDonald, of Bellport, who admitted rape in case of missing Long Island girl, won't face lifetime sex offender status, judge rules

A Suffolk judge ruled a 21-year-old Bellport man who admitted raping a 14-year-old Patchogue girl who went missing for 25 days last year should not be a lifetime sex offender, citing his age and lack of criminal history in her decision to sentence him below the recommended guidelines.

Acting Supreme Court Justice Karen M. Wilutis said assessing Kevin McDonald, 21, of Bellport, as a level 1 sex offender — meaning he has a low risk to reoffend — is "justified."

"Designating [McDonald] as a level 2 sex offender would be an overassessment of his risk to reoffend and his risk to the community," the judge determined during a sentencing hearing in Riverhead on Wednesday.

McDonald, who pleaded guilty to second-degree statutory rape last month, will be released from county jail having already served beyond his 6-month sentence. He will be required to register as a sex offender for 20 years and will have to appear before Wilutis for compliance checks beginning in February. McDonald will also remain on probation for 10 years, the judge informed him.

"We’re all going to try to help you," Wilutis told McDonald. "But you gotta help yourself. You’ve got to make better decisions."

"Yes ma’am," replied McDonald, who otherwise declined to address the court.

Reached via text message, Frank Gervasi, the girl's father, said he provided the Suffolk District Attorney's Office with a victim impact statement. No statements were shared in open court.

McDonald is the first defendant to plead guilty and be sentenced in the sprawling 11-defendant indictment related to the girl's disappearance.

Statutory rape is a "strict liability" crime, meaning it is irrelevant if a person knows their victim's actual age, according to the law. It is designated a violent felony, and Wilutis told McDonald he faced up to 7 years in prison.

"You’re being given this chance because of your age and your background," the judge said.

McDonald, who was 20 years old at the time of the crime, admitted Nov. 3 to meeting the girl outside a Bellport residence on Dec. 10, 2024, the day after she was reported missing by her parents. Newsday is not naming the now-15-year-old girl because she is a minor and the victim of a sex crime.

The girl told police McDonald was sitting in a 1998 Honda Accord on Michigan Avenue in North Bellport when she approached him and entered the vehicle, Suffolk County police records show. They smoked marijuana and had sex before he drove her to a motel in Bohemia, she told investigators.

Prosecutors previously said McDonald was seen on surveillance footage dropping the girl off from Starwood Inn. A manager at the motel told Newsday the girl said she was searching for a friend before leaving the property. It was the last place she was seen before her discovery on a yacht in Islip on Jan. 3, records show.

Defense attorney Melissa Aguanno, of Holbrook, argued for the downgraded status, even though McDonald met the minimum assessment standards to qualify for level 2 status, in part due to a "minimal age difference" between her client and the victim. She also noted it was a statutory rape case and not a "forced rape," reminding the judge the girl told a grand jury she had sex with McDonald because "she just felt like it."

Aguanno said McDonald was a high school graduate and honors student who was working two jobs at the time and had never been arrested. He had no relationships with any of the 10 other defendants in the indictment, Aguanno said, having only now met some of them in jail.

"This is not the kind of case, not the kind of person you want to put that [lifetime registrant] stigma on," Aguanno said. "He’s going to pay for this his entire life. He is a convicted sex offender."

Aguanno said her client aims to pursue a career as an auto mechanic and that she hopes his sex offender status will not jeopardize his wishes.

While some attorneys in the case have argued the girl told their clients she was older than she was, Aguanno said she never brought that up in court both because it does not matter legally and out of respect for the girl.

"For me to bring it up, I feel it’s just it’s not gonna help," Aguanno said outside court. "She was a victim regardless. She was 14 years old."

Aguanno said her experience as a former social worker and as the mother of a young woman she adopted from a similar background as the Patchogue girl has informed her feelings about the case. She said she does believe lawmakers should look at the statutory rape charge to build in some defenses in certain instances and that an "investigation into [the girl’s] home life" is warranted. A Newsday investigation pointed to a hyper-sexualized lifestyle among the girl’s father and stepmother in the home where she lived and trauma she endured from past criminal sexual relationships with adult men as factors in her home life and disappearance.

"This kind of case does not happen in a vacuum," Aguanno said. "She was not plucked off the street, a girl walking to school."

The girl had left her house about 24 hours earlier on the evening of Dec. 9 and spent that night in a house on Doane Avenue with Alton Harrell, 36, who is facing a first-degree kidnapping charge in the case, before she approached McDonald while barefoot, court papers say. After leaving the motel, the girl spent the next three weeks in various other locations with men and women accused of kidnapping and trafficking her, according to officials.

In total, 23 people in two states have been charged with crimes related to the Patchogue girl for various offenses dating back to 2023, a Newsday investigation found. Charges are still pending against 16 of those individuals, including two state workers accused of abuse at residential centers where the girl was housed after she was found Jan. 3 on a yacht docked at an Islip marina.

Harrell, yacht owner Francis Buckheit, 65, of East Islip, and Daniel Burke, 64, of Bohemia, are all facing first-degree kidnapping charges for allegedly housing the girl during her December disappearance and face the possibility of being sentenced to 25 years to life in prison if convicted at trial. Robert Eccleston, 61, of Islip, was charged with second-degree kidnapping, which carries a maximum penalty of up to 25 years behind bars.

Elizabeth Hunter, 35, of Islip, and Jacquelyn Comiskey, 52, of Bellport, are facing child sex trafficking charges for allegedly trading the girl for sex with men in exchange for drugs and money, prosecutors have said.

Eight men, including Harrell, Buckheit, Burke and Eccleston, are accused of raping the girl at locations across southwestern Suffolk County during her disappearance. A ninth man was charged with attempted rape.

Four men pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct in St. Cloud, Minnesota, that state's equivalent to statutory rape, after the same girl ran away from a youth rehabilitation facility there in May 2024, a Newsday investigation found. The men were each accused of having sex with the girl while she was missing in the Midwestern city for three days.

Before her family sent her to Minnesota for treatment, the girl was certified in New York as a victim of sex trafficking after she was found at a Bay Shore motel with a man who allegedly supplied her with crack cocaine. Danny St. Louis, 44, of Bay Shore, is being held at Suffolk County jail awaiting trial on rape and trafficking charges related to the girl and at least three other women, court records show.

Two other men were arrested in 2023 and pleaded guilty in Suffolk County Criminal Court to sex offenses related to the girl when she was 12 and 13 years old, Newsday found. Brandon Keezer, 22, of Shirley, and his uncle Daniel Keezer, 42, of Mastic Beach, are both incarcerated after being accused of parole violations.

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.