Franklin County judge sends sex offender to prison for 70 months
August 16, 2014 by admin
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A convicted sex offender who pleaded Friday for treatment instead is going to prison because she failed to show much remorse for encouraging a lingerie-clad teen to participate in a lengthy photo shoot.
Suzette Angela Razzolini was ordered to serve five years and 10 months for the September 2011 crime.
She told the court that 23 hours a day for 203 days she has sat in her cell with more questions than answers about why she’s there and thinking about what her future might hold.
Razzolini has been in custody since a Franklin County Superior Court jury convicted her Jan. 24 for sexual exploitation of a minor with the aggravating circumstance that she used a position of trust.
“I strive to be the best possible person I can be while in here, and I want to continue to be the best possible person I can be out there,” she said.
“I’ve heard it said that children are a product of their environment. Unfortunately I’m proof of that,” said Razzolini, who told a counselor she was sexually abused during her childhood and has been diagnosed with mental issues. “This is not an excuse for the choices I’ve made.”
Her 10-minute speech before the court included a tearful request of the victim to forgive her and to take advantage of counseling.
“This is not your fault. None of this is your fault and, no matter what this sentence is, it’s a life-changing sentence,” Razzolini said.
But Judge Robert Swisher — after taking a 23-minute recess to think about the “difficult sentencing” — said Razzolini didn’t deserve a Special Sex Offender Sentencing Alternative because her story has been inconsistent and changed late in the evaluation process as she prepared for sentencing.
The sentencing alternative usually carries a county jail term of six months to one year along with extended sex offender treatment.
“I’ve done a fair number of these SSOSA hearings, and every one I’ve done in the past starts with the defendant saying, ‘I know what I did was wrong,’ ” Swisher said. “This one hasn’t started that way. I don’t believe (Razzolini) has truly accepted responsibility for what she did to (the girl).”
Razzolini, 42, originally was charged in Benton County, but the case was dismissed and refiled in Franklin County because the incident occurred in Pasco.
Benton County sheriff’s Detective Scott Runge discovered video of the photo shoot on a computer during a child molestation investigation involving Razzolini’s husband, Daniel Paul Devorkin.
Jurors had to watch 41/2 hours of that video during Razzolini’s trial. In the video, Razzolini can be seen posing with the young teen girl and an older teen, while also telling them what to wear and how to model seductively, according to court documents.
Devorkin took pictures and shot the video, which also shows the couple providing alcohol to the younger girl and drinking it with her, documents said.
The older teen was not included in the charge because she was not considered a minor by law.
Devorkin pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree child molestation and sexual exploitation of a minor for the same victim. He is serving his five-year, eight-month term at Airway Heights Corrections Center.
Deputy Prosecutor Brian Hultgrenn had asked for a seven-year sentence for Razzolini because she admitted to perjuring herself at trial in the “heinous case.” He questioned if her claims of wanting to change were genuine and how treatment would help her when earlier mental health counseling didn’t stop her from committing the crime.
Defense attorney Norma Rodriguez said her client underwent an extensive evaluation process with a Yakima counselor to determine that she is amenable to therapy. She also pointed out that a few jurors after the trial said it was their wish to see Razzolini get community-based treatment.
Rodriguez represented Razzolini along with attorney Michelle Alexander.
Rodriguez blamed Devorkin for taking advantage of their client’s vulnerability, said “to a significant degree the victim was a willing participant” in the photo shoot and noted that Razzolini wouldn’t even be standing before the court if she had not turned over the video in her husband’s investigation.
The victim told Swisher she supports the request for treatment so Razzolini can “get the help she needs, get back on track and slowly start getting better.”
Razzolini was ordered to have no contact with the victim for four years.
– Kristin M. Kraemer: 509-582-1531; kkraemer@tricityherald.com; Twitter: @KristinMKraemer
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Fashion » Alessandro Dell’Acqua: A Man For All Seasons
August 15, 2014 by admin
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Five years after losing his namesake label, the designer has a new gig at Rochas and a line of his own.
“Courageous” is how fashion folk describe a designer who slashes hemlines or adds a few bondage straps. But Alessandro Dell’Acqua showed old-school courage five years ago, when he risked his career to defend creative autonomy, walked away from his eponymous label, and, at age 46, started over from zero. “There was a moment when every door was closed in my face,” recalls the Naples-born designer, whose clothes have been worn by style icons as varied as Anna Dello Russo and Michael Jackson. Dell’Acqua is a film fanatic whose tastes range from Italian neorealism to Hollywood dramas, and there is a touch of cinematic justice in his recent return to the scene. Not only has No. 21—the label he started four years ago—won accolades and sprouted a men’s line, but Dell’Acqua also saw a lifelong dream fulfilled when he was named creative director of Rochas last year.
“For me, it’s like a coronation. It has given me a whole new way of living, a lot of motivation and energy, as if I were 20 again,” says Dell’Acqua, whose slight figure and sculptural Neapolitan face give him a boyish look despite his silver-streaked hair. It’s a wet spring afternoon in Milan, and the soft-spoken designer, just back from a hectic week of work travel around Italy, looks surprisingly relaxed as he pauses to have a coffee in his Città Studi showroom. Behind him are racks displaying pieces from the two labels. It’s quite a contrast: sumptuous, architectural, slightly decadent, very French Rochas; and young, sexy, streetwise, consummately Italian No. 21. “When I am working for No. 21, I only think of 21. When I am creating a collection for Rochas, No. 21 doesn’t exist. Different woman, different situation,” he says. “I have always done a lot of things at once.”
Dell’Acqua’s versatility grows out of his three-decade journey through every possible realm of Italian fashion. As a kid in 1970s Naples, he was fascinated by the work of famous film costumers. Soon he was spending his allowance on fashion magazines and hanging around the city’s few upscale shops. At 13, he became a part-time apprentice for a legendary Neapolitan dressmaker. And after graduating from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples, he set off for Milan, following in the footsteps of other ambitious Southern Italians like Domenico Dolce and Gianni Versace. “Perhaps we in the South have a strong desire to make it because we lack so much,” he says. “There are not many ways to express yourself culturally. And the women there have a huge influence.”
Armed with a portfolio of sketches and an address he found in a newspaper, Dell’Acqua talked his way into the Via Brera showroom of his favorite designer, Enrica Massei, and was hired on the spot. He further educated himself by moving around from designer to designer “to absorb everything I could,” he explains. “I’d get promoted to top assistant and then move on. It served me well over the years, because I remember everything.”
So began Dell’Acqua’s very active career as Milan’s man for all seasons, the hidden talent who could—and did—design high-end ready-to-wear during a series of posts and consulting gigs for companies as diverse as Genny (he was head designer when he was 23), La Perla, Borbonese, Iceberg, Les Copains, Max Mara, Malo, and Brioni.
Dell’Acqua launched his own ready-to-wear label in 1996. His signature was eroticized elegance: layered black, beige, and nude chiffon transparencies that evoked lingerie. It drew on memories of hot summer days when the women in his family used to walk around the house in their underwear, “completely free and uninhibited”—an atmosphere echoed in one of his favorite noir films, 1995’s l’Amore Molesto, in which the heroine wanders through Naples in a satin slip. The lingerie look was peppered with sharp tailored pieces, conveying a theatrical glamour that caught on with the show business crowd: For Michael Jackson’s ill-fated 2009 This Is It tour, Dell’Acqua came up with gold-sequined trousers for the performer.
“Not to have your name is like not having a piece of your body.”
Around the turn of the millennium, Dell’Acqua branched out into men’s wear, accessories, and fragrance. But in June 2009, he issued a press release stating that the upcoming collections were being produced without his approval because of creative disagreements with his production company, Cherry Grove. Dell’Acqua severed ties with Cherry Grove and—in a fate similar to that of Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, and Roland Mouret before him—lost the rights to the eponymous fashion house he’d worked so hard to build. Today, the Alessandro Dell’Acqua label exists with no connection to the designer.
Understandably, it was a bitter period for Dell’Acqua. “It was a big drama for me,” he says. “Not to have your name is like not having a piece of your body.” He was unemployed, having lost his position as head designer of Malo—also the property of Cherry Grove—and his elderly parents were seriously ill. (Both passed away in the spring.) “The world of fashion forgets very quickly. For six months, I sat at home and heard from nobody. It certainly changes your way of thinking about people you thought were close to you.”
He put together a proposal for an edgier, more casual ready-to-wear line, but none of the major Italian manufacturers he approached were willing to invest. “I went to all the big companies with a detailed plan, a good name, years of experience, and everyone said, ‘Yes, yes, you’re great, but we have no faith in this kind of project.’ ” Still, Dell’Acqua, who describes himself as very stubborn, persisted, making the rounds of “medium, then small, then very small” production companies. Meanwhile, he applied for freelance gigs and ended up taking a two-year creative-director post at Brioni and then moved to Les Copains for a year. Finally, he found a tiny family-run company in Bergamo willing to produce a no-frills collection of just 30 pieces.
The new label, which made its debut in Milan in 2010, was christened No. 21, for Dell’Acqua’s birthday, and also his lucky number. The line was immediately well received: Less romantic than the designer’s original label, it focused more on day clothes rather than evening wear, playing with ideas of masculinity and femininity and mixing high-tech textiles with traditional fabrics. In two years, No. 21 outgrew the Bergamo factory, and the major fashion producer Gilmar stepped in, allowing Dell’Acqua to expand into men’s wear.
“Rochas is cinema, darkness, grandeur, and dreams.”
In the summer of 2013, Dell’Acqua got the call from Rochas. “It was completely out of the blue, and when they said they were thinking of me, I told myself, ‘Don’t get your hopes up—after all, you’re not so young anymore.’ But all my life I had dreamed of heading up a French house, and I have always particularly loved the femininity of Rochas. But the bizarre thing is that my first boss, Enrica Massei, is married to Franco Penè, who owns the company that produces Rochas—so we met again after 25 years. It was destiny.”
His first collection this past January was inspired by the rigorous forms and Gothic sensibility of classic French film noir: Voluminous coats and sheath dresses took on a decadent twist, with lashings of crystals and accessories thick with jet spikes. In the showroom in Milan, Dell’Acqua shows me one of his Rochas favorites: a duchesse silk satin coat in a camel color close to his beloved beige and pink flesh tones, glittering with shards of Swarovski crystal. It contrasts with a standout piece from No. 21: an oversize motorcycle jacket in green plaid wool that imperceptibly segues into a border of velvety gray sheepskin. “No. 21 is for daytime and the street; and Rochas is cinema, darkness, grandeur, and dreams,” Dell’Acqua says, like a parent praising two very different children.
It’s time for Dell’Acqua to get on with his busy afternoon of vetting shoes and accessories for the spring 2015 collections of both labels. (He will give no hints, except to say that the theme is “lightness.”) He exudes the buzz of true contentment for a designer—the thrill of having too much to do—but at the same time, his dark eyes retain the watchful expression of a survivor.
Before he says goodbye, Dell’Acqua confides a deeper reason for his satisfaction: Both of his parents—his biggest fans—lived long enough to see what he calls his “rebirth.” “When I was younger, I was completely carefree, but now I have more awareness of what I’m doing,” he says, glancing down the table at a spiky Rochas pump. “I’ve learned that you never know how things will turn out. You need to have the courage to take a risk.”