YOUNGSTOWN — Michael T. Alexander, 50, of Youngstown was sentenced to 15 to 19 years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty earlier to two counts of rape of a child from 2018 through 2023.

Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Caitlyn Andrews told Judge John Durkin that the victim said Alexander “told her that no one would ever believe her” if she told anyone what Alexander had done. “At the time, he worked as a mechanic at the Youngstown Police Department. And since this happened in Youngstown, he told her everyone would side with him and she would never be believed,” Andrews said.

Andrews asked the judge to sentence Alexander to 15 to 20 1/2 years in prison. Andrews took issue with a defense filing that argued that Alexander is “taking responsibility” for his crimes. “That is absolutely not what he is doing.” Andrews said Alexander “victim blames left, right and center.”

The girl spoke before sentencing, saying “The words awful and miserable don’t even begin to describe the torture me and my family went through.” She called Alexander a “narcissist and manipulator.” She said, “At 12, I didn’t understand the full extent of what was happening. The realization slowly crept in at 15-16.”

She said she “grew depressed, then eventually suicidal, faking a smile in my house and at school so no one would know the pain I was holding in.”

Before announcing the sentence, the judge said he had read the sexual offender risk assessment of Alexander prepared by the Forensic Psychiatric Center of Northeast Ohio and other documents and said, “The thing that concerns me the most” is Alexander’s conduct “over a period of time is something that I cannot understand. It has obviously impacted the victim and her family.”

Alexander worked as a mechanic at the Youngstown Police Department for more than 10 years, up until his arrest in this case. He has been in the Mahoning County jail since April 19, 2024, according to jail records. Alexander is now a tier 3 sex offender, required to register with the sheriff’s office in the place where he lives every 90 days for life when he leaves prison.

CERVELLO

A short time after Alexander’s sentencing hearing, Ashley N. Cervello, 39, of the same address in Youngstown as Alexander, pleaded guilty to felony attempted bribery and misdemeanor intimidation of an attorney, victim or witness in connection to Alexander’s crimes.

The prosecution and defense jointly recommended that Cervello get five years of probation and no jail time. That is the sentence Durkin ordered, plus six months in the county jail with all of that time suspended except for 30 days she already spent in jail awaiting trial.

Cervello’s attorney, Brian Tareshawty, told the judge that Cervello’s attempted bribery offense was for Cervello agreeing to Alexander’s request that she promise to give the victim a nice car in order for the victim to say that she was 13 and not 12 at the time the offenses began.

Penalties for raping a child under 13 are more severe than for raping a child 13 and over.

Cervello did that “because she loves him,” Tareshawty said of Alexander. “He has her intimidate a witness,” Tareshawty said. The victim later “couldn’t take it any longer” and admitted that she lied about that, he said.