News

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. -- A Long Island man has pleaded guilty to accepting a 15-year-old girl for sex as payment for giving crack cocaine to the girl's grandmother. Joseph Bullard pleaded guilty to attempted rape in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead Tuesday. Bullard admitted to having sex with the girl at the Poospatuck Indian Reservation in Mastic on Aug. 25, 2002. The girl was brought to Bullard by her grandmother. The grandmother wanted crack cocaine but couldn't pay so she allegedly offered her teenage granddaughter as payment. The grandmother, who is not being identified to protect the teenage girl, faces a trial on rape and sodomy charges. Judge Michael Mullen agreed to give Bullard six years in prison when he's sentenced Feb. 24. He could have gotten 25 years if he had gone ahead with a trial on the more serious charges of rape and sodomy.