81-Year-Old Details How Great-Nephew Raped Her: 'I’ll Smother You'

An 81-year-old woman from Brooklyn, New York, recounted the moment her great-nephew raped her at his Wednesday trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

The unnamed woman got emotional as she recalled how her 36-year-old great-nephew, Jewell Powell, raped her in her home two years ago, the New York Daily News reported. According to the woman, she let Powell live on her couch for about a month in 2019, but things changed on June 13 of that year.

"I was in my bedroom watching TV. I got up to go to the kitchen. He was there, naked. He grabbed me," the elderly woman alleged, adding that Powell then dragged her to her bedroom and raped her.

The woman recalled that Powell became further enraged when the octogenarian attempted to fight back.

"When I kicked him, he put me back on the bed, put his hands on my throat and said, 'Next time you do that, I'll smother you,'" she alleged.

Powell gave the elderly woman a knife and told her to kill him, she recalled. He then threatened to kill himself when she refused.

In the days following the incident, the woman told her grandson and daughter what her great-nephew had done.

"He was my favorite," the woman told the court. "I hate him."

Powell was arrested two days later and has since been held at Rikers Island on $70,000 bail.

A similar incident occurred last month when a man was arrested for raping and murdering a homeless 73-year-old woman in the Indian state of Telangana.

Police arrested 53-year-old Aderla Upender on April 27 when a friend reported him carrying a mutilated body part.

Authorities said Upender raped the woman when she entered his home and decapitated her when she attempted to resist. Afterward, he dismembered her body and took the limbs to a nearby forest area, where he burnt the parts along with her head. He then packed what remained of the woman in a bag and planned to dump it on a railway track.

Upon his capture, Upender confessed his crime to the police and said he chopped the body to hide the murder. Police were able to recover the torso of the woman.

Locals in the area alleged that the woman was murdered as part of an occult practice and claimed several others were involved in the crime, prompting further investigation from police.