UPDATE: Michael Abdallah Slapped On The Wrist, Sentenced To 4 to 6 Years for 2nd & 3rd Degree Rape

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By Edmund DeMarche, CNN
February 10, 2010 7:04 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- A Buffalo, New York, man is due in court Thursday to face charges that he raped a 13-year-old runaway police say he held prisoner in his home for six months.


Michael J. Abdallah, 26, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree rape, unlawful imprisonment and custodial interference. Thursday's hearing will determine if the case should be referred to a grand jury.

Buffalo police said that Abdallah kept the girl in his home from July through December 2009, behind dead-bolt locks and doors with no doorknobs. A criminal complaint alleges that Abdallah had sex with her more than 100 times. Police spokesman Michael DeGeorge said Abdallah also forced the girl to baby-sit his year-old son.

Abdallah is unmarried, and the identity of the child's mother is not known. Police would not say how the girl left Adbdallah's home, why there was a delay from December to February for his arrest or where the teenager is now.

Abdallah was arrested Friday when police raided his home on a child-abuse allegation, Buffalo media reported. The next day, Buffalo City Court Judge James A.W. McLeod set bond at $250,000 in an arraignment at which Abdallah represented himself. He has since been provided with a court-appointed attorney, according to media reports.

But friends of the defendant told the Buffalo News that he was nothing more than a Good Samaritan trying to help a runaway girl he met in a Buffalo park.

"Everybody has had their moments, but Mike is not a monster. As long as I've known Mike, he's always been kindhearted to me. If he could help you, he will help you," Alicia Bellaus, 20, who grew up next door to Abdallah's relatives, told the paper.

"Mike always had her calling to someone, supposedly her aunt, to say she was doing OK. From what I knew, her aunt or her mom knew where she was staying," said Bellaus, who previously had a romantic relationship with Abdallah. "To look at her, she is very developed physically, and you would think that she is older than 13."

Bellaus said the girl told her she was 17 or 18 and denied having sex with Abdallah, and that she also said she did not want to go home to her mother, the News said.

Police told the News that the family filed several missing person reports after the girl disappeared in July. And an unnamed law enforcement official told the paper that Abdallah was a manipulative drug dealer who "lured her in" and kept her trapped physically and psychologically. CNN, however, could not confirm that official's view.

George Kimble, who lives four doors from Abdallah, said he was surprised when he learned about the accusations.

"This is a street where everyone knows everyone," said Kimble, who remembered Abdallah moving in about a year-and-a-half ago. "I never recall him with a 13-year-old girl."

Kimble said Abdallah was seldom home, and their brief conversations were limited to Abdallah's two dogs. Other neighbors told Kimble the house had a steady stream of visitors on any given day.

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By Lou Michel News Staff Reporter
Published: February 12, 2010, 12:00 am

A 13-year-old runaway girl who authorities say was repeatedly raped by a 26-year-old man testified Thursday that he had sex with her three times a day and that their relations started when she was 12.

Michael Abdallah's attorney argued that the girl is lying in order to deflect attention from her admission that she intentionally burned the left hand of Abdallah's infant son while she was living in his East Side home and baby-sitting the boy.

But by the time the felony hearing ended in Buffalo City Court, Judge James A.W. McLeod ruled that there was cause for a grand jury review of the allegations against Abdallah, who now is in the Erie County Holding Center, and increased his bail from $250,000 to $500,000.

"Three times a day?" McLeod asked.

The teenager repeated her allegation that Abdallah had sex with her multiple times each day. Also under questioning by prosecutor Rosanne E. Johnson, the girl stated that in the summer of 2008, she and Abdallah had their first sexual encounter "when I was 12."

She also testified that she stopped living with Abdallah by crawling out a window because "you needed a key to open the deadbolts," explaining that there were no doorknobs on the doors that opened to the outside of the Thomas Street house.

The eighth-grader said she lived with Abdallah from late October until Dec. 19.

When Johnson asked the girl why she waited until January to tell her mother that Abdallah had sex with her, the girl answered, "Because I didn't want to get anyone in trouble."

Abdallah sat quietly at the defense table several feet from the girl as she testified.

Defense attorney Frank M. Bogulski tried to show that the girl had a motive for alleging that she was raped by Abdallah.

"Did you make up the charges because you burned the baby's hand?" Bogulski asked.
The girl said, "No."

Despite allegations that the girl was held against her will, she acknowledged under questioning from Bogulski that she was able to leave the house from time to time.

Alicia Bellaus, a former girlfriend of Abdallah who testified on his behalf, said that when she stayed at the house, the girl slept with her in a bed while Abdallah slept on the couch.

As for the girl's being held against her will, Bellaus said, "As far as I was concerned, she came and went as she pleased."

Bellaus also testified that she never saw Abdallah threaten or harm the girl.

Johnson, in showing the close friendship between Bellaus and Abdallah, asked the 20-year-old Bellaus whether it was true that Abdallah had asked her permission to let the girl move into his house and that Bellaus required Abdallah to sleep on the couch while the girl was there.

"Yes," Bellaus answered to both questions.

Bellaus agreed with Johnson that she was not there the entire time the girl lived at the home and had no idea about whom Abdallah had sex with during that time.

After the felony hearing, Bogulski said Abdallah has "100 percent" denied ever having sex with the girl. When asked whether Abdallah would be willing to take a lie-detector test, Bogulski said that would be addressed at a later time.

McLeod ruled repeatedly that Bogulski's questions pertaining to the burn to the hand of Abdallah's 1-year-old son were not relevant. But the defense attorney later insisted that it was significant that the girl acknowledged to Detective Tara O'Neill that she did burn the child's hand, apparently holding it over a humidifier.

"It gives the complainant a motive to lie," Bogulski said, adding that he believes that the girl decided to turn the focus of the child-abuse investigation away from herself by making up a story that Abdallah had raped her.

Bellaus, who brought the infant to Women & Children's Hospital for treatment, said the girl vanished after it was determined by medical personnel that the baby's hand was intentionally burned.

"After I told her that Child Protection Services workers wanted to speak with her," Bellaus said, "she disappeared."

November 3, 2011

A 28-year-old New York man has been sentenced to up to six years in prison after admitting he had sex with underage girls and promoted prostitution.

Michael Abdallah of Buffalo apologized at his sentencing Thursday in Erie County Court, where he pleaded guilty to second- and third-degree rape in September.
Abdallah was arrested in February 2010 after a then-13-year-old girl told police he had kept her as a sex slave inside his apartment for several months until she escaped.

Police say he held the runaway from July 2009 to December of that year, had sex with her more than 100 times and made her baby-sit his 1-year-old son.
Abdallah's lawyer told the judge that all of his relations with girls were consensual.

The judge said he'd taken advantage of vulnerable runaways.

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November 05, 2011
Buffalo Muslim man has been sentenced to 4-6 years for keeping a 13-year-old girl as his sex slave
ONLY 4 to 6 years? A slap on the wrist for Michael Abdallah, 26, who pleaded guilty last month to rape and prostitution charges. Authorities arrested him last year and he was later indicted on multiple charges including rape, promoting prostitution, and child endangerment. The case is said to have involved four teen-aged girls.

WIVB (H/T Dawn E) Disturbing accusations are surfacing about a teenaged runaway held captive for months.Buffalo Police have charged Abdullah with holding a 13-year-old girl hostage for months and having sex with her repeatedly..

But the disturbing accusations don’t end there. We’re learning more shocking revelations about a man accused in the repeated rape of an under-age girl held captive in a Buffalo home.

We’ve learned this investigation started in December when a 1-year-old baby boy was brought to Women and Children’s Hospital with a burn on his hand. Police learned that at the time of the burn, a 13-year-old girl was watching the child. That led authorities to arrest Michael Abdallah. A neighbor told News 4 that she’s seen him with several women before, but never teenaged girls.

Michael Abdallah is believed to be the son of Salah Abdullah, the owner of the deli that caught fire, and where firefighters Lt. Charles Chip McCarthy and Donathan Croom lost their lives after becoming trapped. Michael’s brother Adel told News 4 he hasn’t had contact with Michael for two years. The father has returned to Yemen.

This is a family whose problems have made the news more than once. Neighbors say Abdallah’s family also lives on the street, and they say his sister is Etidel Abdullah, the 21-year-old Lackawanna woman who went missing back in September of 2008. Only to surface five months later. She had been living with a relative’s girlfriend in Buffalo, telling authorities she was ok. It is still unclear why she went into hiding.

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