Nicki Minaj's Brrother Sent To Jail For Repeatedly Raping His 11-Year-Old Stepdaughter

Nicki Minaj’s brother is facing up to 25 years behind bars following the guilty verdict in his child rape trial. His sentence was announced on Monday, two years after Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Robert McDonald handed him down the guilty verdict for the sexual abuse.

The trial, which started in late 2015, sealed Jelani Maraj’s fate when he was convicted of “predatory sexual assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child” upon its conclusion. Inside the Long Island court room on Monday, McDonald lambasted the accused for his sexual abuse, lacing into him for “ruining” his child victim. “You raped this child,” he told Maraj. “You raped her over and over again,” he added.

Nicki Minaj did not show up in court to support her brother on Monday. However, she wrote a letter in 2016 appealing for a lighter sentence for his brother. In the said letter, Minaj described Maraj as “the most patient, gentle, genuine, giving, selfless man I know.”

Before his sentencing, Maraj’s victim told the court that the abuse she had suffered in the hands of Maraj led her to become suicidal. “I didn’t think I could make it through the day without an anxiety attack,” she said. “I felt I had no voice.”

In 2017, the girl testified in court that Maraj had repeatedly raped her in their Baldwin home while he was still married to her mother. It started in 2015, when he sexually abused her while her mother was at work and threatened to send her mother away if she told anyone about it.

While Maraj claimed that her story was concocted, the victim’s brother testified that he had actually witnessed Maraj assaulting his sister when she was only eight. The boy reported the abuse to their school administrator in December 2015, leading to the arrest of Maraj.

Following his sentencing, Maraj and his lawyer appealed to overturn the case but the court immediately threw it out. “I’d like to apologize for the pain that I caused,” said Maraj. “I had an excessive drinking problem,” he said, adding that he only wanted “mercy from the court.”