A Hunts Points prostitute testified in the Bronx yesterday in the trial of an accused serial sex assaulter. James Schlau, a registered sex offender, is accused of two sex assaults and the rape of three Bronx prostitutes. The 23-year-old victim described her terrifying encounter with him in detail: "‘Open your legs or I’ll cut your p----,’" he allegedly threatened her.
She said that Schlau, a partially deaf ex-con, threatened her with a razor blade if she didn't have sex with him. "His voice was very creepy and I’ll never forget that voice...It scared me and started making me get chills all over my body," she testified. After she was forced to perform oral sex, Schlau allegedly punched her in the face, then tried to have sex with her: "He forced me to do things I didn't want to do. He was a coward."
The woman said she recognized his voice immediately two weeks after the assault when she was in the 41st Precinct on a summons for disorderly conduct, and Schlau was there after being picked up on a weapons charge. Schlau, who works for a bus shelter cleaning company based in Queens, was arrested in Minnesota in 1998 for attacking a woman, and reincarcerated after he tried to flee in 2005 during a brief release with "intense supervision."
Schlau is registered as a violent sex offender in NY. According to AP, Schlau's lawyer admitted that her client does frequent prostitutes, but never raped them.
