FROM CHAT TO CRIME

Connecticut man wooed, fondled 15-yr.-old girl: cops

BY JOHN LAUINGER -- DAILY NEWS WRITER

A Connecticut man courted a 15-year-old Long Island girl on the Internet for a year before sexually abusing her inside his Mercedes, Suffolk police said.

The alleged Internet predator, Louis Fappiano, 24, of West Haven, Conn., agreed to surrender to authorities in Suffolk County Tuesday following a month-long police investigation, police said.

Fappiano, who works for Yale University as an administrative assistant, met the then-14-year-old girl in an Internet game room in 2005, said Detective Sergeant John Cowie, commanding officer of the Suffolk Police Department computer crimes unit, which conducted the investigation.

Cowie said that Fappiano and the girl communicated for more than a year via telephone and Internet chat rooms such as myspace.com and Yahoo.com.

"They both knew each other's real ages," Cowie said.

Fappiano arranged for a Long Island rendezvous on July 22, 2006, when the girl was 15. He took her to Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que in Smithtown, and then they went bowling at Sports Plus in Lake Grove.

"He wined her and dined her ... and then he tried to have his way with her," Cowie said. Fappiano fondled her inside his silver late-model Mercedes in the Sports Plus parking lot, Cowie added.

When the girl "fought off his attempts," Fappiano halted his advances, Cowie said. The girl told her parents about the incident three months later, and police were notified.

Cowie said detectives obtained several subpoenas to track Fappiano's Internet conversations with the girl.

After surrendering to detectives Tuesday, Fappiano was arraigned in First District Court on one count of first-degree sexual abuse - a class D felony - and one count each of third-degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors.

He pleaded not guilty, and Judge Paul Hensley released him on his own recognizance. Cowie said Fappiano wasn't charged with more serious crimes because he didn't do "anything beyond touching." "Fortunately for her, he didn't go far enough to raise [the charges] to attempted rape," Cowie said.

Fappiano is due back in court Nov. 27. If convicted of first-degree sexual abuse, he could do up to seven years in prison. It was not known whether Fappiano has hired an attorney.

Representatives of Yale University could not be reached for comment.

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