By Henry Stiepleman
SACRAMENTO – A Sacramento man who raped and abused his biological daughter will only serve 14 years in state prison.
Carewin (Glenn) Czekaj, the defendant, had been charged with 12 separate counts related to the repeated rape of his own daughter from 2016 to 2019, according to the Sacramento County Superior Court Public Case Access System.
Normally, Czekaj would be looking at life in prison using normal sentencing guidelines.
But because the victim died this January – she was 12 years old – while receiving medical care, most of the charges were dismissed by the prosecution for lack of evidence.
The victim’s mother was on the Zoom call to read a statement before Judge Patrick Marlette gave judgment and sentencing.
She wore a white shirt with the word “JUSTICE” in large, blue font along the top.
“Since 2009, I have struggled and fought with you to be in [our daughter’s] life. And you constantly manipulated the relationship between her and I,” began the victim’s mother, continuing, “I could never understand why. I’ve tried to be a good mom. I love my kids. I thought maybe I wasn’t strict enough or maybe because I didn’t have enough money.”
She added, “But on March 5, 2019, I finally knew the truth. I received a call from a CPS worker telling me that [our daughter] had come forward and told me that you, the man who was supposed to 
love and protect her, had been raping and abusing her for the past three years.”
At this point, the victim’s mother began to struggle through tears. “Hearing those words broke my heart. I was crying before she could even finish. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My baby girl.” As the mother added, “I couldn’t imagine it,” she broke down crying.
The faces of Judge Marlette and Deputy District Attorney Sydne Jones showed they were visibly upset.
Jeff Schaff, the victim representative present with the victim’s mother, read the remainder of the statement to the court while the mother continued to cry.
“How could you be our child’s worst nightmare?” continued Schaff.
The statement recounted what her daughter had told her. “Not only would you wake her up in the mornings and rape her. She would beg you to stop. You would choke her until she nearly passed out. You tied a rope around her neck and drug her around a football field. You would kick her in the butt with your steel-toe work boots… [She] truly thought one day you would kill her,” read Schaff.
“I will never forgive you for any of this. You have caused so much pain. Because of the physical and emotional pain that you caused [her], she died while being at the Children’s Receiving Home. You’ll never understand the amount of pain I felt when I had to walk into a small room at a funeral home and see my sweet 12-year-old baby, lying there, dead,” the statement read.
“The prison sentence that you receive is not nearly enough… This is not justice… [She] was prepared to walk into the courtroom and face you and make sure you were convicted of all the things you did to her,” read Schaff.
The victim’s statement concluded with, “She did not live in fear of you, neither do I. But I hope you are haunted by her memory every time you close your eyes.”
After the victim’s statement, Judge Marlette added, “A sentence that is going to haunt me until I finish this job is when this child’s mother said, every morning, her father would wake her up and rape her.”
There was a long pause before the judge continued, “You are just…there are more hearts broken than the mom’s due to your conduct. It’s diminished the humanity of anybody who hears what you did.”
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