A Williamsburg man who cops say held a 27-year-old woman captive in his apartment as his “sex slave” for nine days was hit with on 16 rape counts on Friday — but his lawyer is claiming that the victim was a willing participant in the “mutually fulfilling relationship.”
On Friday, John Hopkins, 45, was formally arraigned on first-degree rape, aggravated sexual abuse, assault, and unlawful imprisonment for forcing his victim to have sex with him in his Humboldt Street apartment after she answered his Craigslist ad for a rental space.
But later in the day, his lawyer, Andrew Stoll, distributed sexually explicit e-mails that he claimed were “from the accuser.”
“I wish nothing more than to serve your every demand (and maybe forcedly…),” read a Dec. 27 e-mail that Stoll said was from the accuser to Hopkins. “I want nothing more than to please you, Master.”
According to cops, the victim, whose name has not been released, responded to Hopkins’s posting about an apartment on the online classified service. After he said she could live in his unit for free as long as she cooked for him, she flew from her native Wisconsin to New York on Feb. 4. Hopkins picked her up at the airport and drove her to the apartment — but once inside, he imprisoned her and told her that she would serve as his “slave.”
Hopkins bound and gagged her for over a week and forced her to have oral and anal sex, sometimes handcuffing her to a radiator, according to law enforcement sources.
Hopkins let her leave the apartment several times to go to a restaurant job she held in Manhattan, cops said, but it is unclear why she did not call her mother for help until Feb. 12.
Her mother called Wisconsin cops, who got in touch with the NYPD, which said its officers raided the apartment and found the victim trembling on Hopkins’s bed without any clothes.
They also said that they observed a house set up for sexual abuse: bolts attached to the ceiling of the studio, and an array of sex toys, including ball gags, a whip, and a rope placed in a bag on the floor.
But in a jailhouse interview with the Daily News, Hopkins said, “I didn’t rape her.”
“A woman says anything happened to them in New York State, and they believe her and not the man,” he added. “Everything they’re saying I did was consensual. She could have left if she wanted to, but she didn’t.”
And a Feb. 5 e-mail that Stoll made available told Hopkins, “I yearn to serve my Master better. Can i cook for you tomarrow (sic)? I love you so much.”
The e-mails make it clear that Hopkins is innocent, his lawyer said.
“It is plain [from the e-mails] these were consensual acts performed by two adults who freely entered into a voluntary, mutually fulfilling relationship,” said Stoll.
“These accusations only arose when my client called the complainant’s mother, to tell her that her daughter needed some emotional help, and should probably go back home.”
