A private equity executive is accused of raping and assaulting six women in his New York City apartment over five months, and prosecutors say “there may be more survivors” of the man’s alleged wrath.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office unsealed a 116-count New York State Supreme Court indictment Thursday charging Ryan Hemphill, 43, with predatory sexual assault, rape and assault — among other counts — in a series of acts alleged to have begun Oct. 3.
Hemphill was arrested March 1. He has been held in jail since then, and he appeared in court for his arraignment Thursday.
He pleaded not guilty, and the judge ordered that he remain in jail.
“The defendant told these survivors that he was untouchable,” District Attorney Bragg said at a news conference Thursday. “The indictment makes clear that he was wrong.”
Prosecutors allege that Hemphill used his wealth and power as a weapon and that he beat and drugged the women to restrain them, threatened them with guns and knives and used a shock collar and a cattle prod before he raped them in what Bragg said was “hours of physical and sexual violence.”
In some cases, prosecutors allege that Hemphill asked the women to confide in him about their past sexual traumas and then re-enacted the acts they described. He is also alleged to have recorded the sex acts on video cameras throughout his midtown Manhattan apartment.
Authorities with a warrant searched Hemphill’s apartment and found high-capacity magazines and hundreds of bullets, a cattle prod, large amounts of drugs and surveillance cameras with videos of dozens of women, according to the DA’s office.
“We have reason to believe that there may be more survivors,” Bragg said. He later said “dozens, if not hundreds, of women are captured on that footage.”
Prosecutors said Hemphill told the women he was highly connected and bragged about his status as an attorney, insisting that because they accepted money he offered, they would be the ones who were arrested.
In one case, Hemphill agreed to pay a woman $2,000 in exchange for her dropping a police complaint, prosecutors claimed. They also alleged he forced the women to record videos saying they consented to the sex acts so he could have deniability if they chose to speak out.
“The power imbalance in his predatory acts could not be more clear,” Bragg said Thursday.
Prosecutors said he met the women online and told them he would pay them “large sums of money” in exchange for sex. In many cases, he never paid the women or paid them with fake money, prosecutors said.
In 2015, Hemphill was acquitted of choking and holding a knife to his ex-girlfriend’s throat.
If he is convicted, Hemphill could face life in prison.
At the arraignment Thursday, Judge Ann E. Scherzer ordered Hemphill to remain jailed without bail. His lawyer, a public defender, asked the judge to move Hemphill to a rehabilitation facility to deal with substance abuse issues.
Scherzer said keeping Hemphill in jail was the only way to ensure he would return to court, as the behaviors laid out by prosecutors show the “extent to which he’s willing to go to protect himself from facing these charges.”
