At last, Everett child molester sentenced after fleeing overseas
Published 4:45 pm Tuesday, February 1, 2022
EVERETT — The victim of an Everett child molester was finally able to address him Tuesday.
Hussein Ali, 32, had admitted to sexually abusing the girl when she was 9. He was in his 20s. It lasted almost two years, according to court documents. At one point, Ali told her not to report him, he wrote in court papers.
Now 19, she said she hasn’t forgotten what he did to her.
“And I’ll never forget,” she said in court. “You ruined my childhood and you took away my innocence. But I’m not the same little girl that you hurt. I’m not the same girl that you thought would never speak out. I’ve grown into a strong woman.”
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Joseph Wilson asked Ali on Tuesday how he pleaded to the criminal charges.
“Count one, first-degree child molestation: How do you plead?”
“Guilty,” responded Ali, sitting in court in his green-striped jail uniform.
“Count two, first-degree child molestation: How do you plead?”
“Guilty, sir.”
“And count three, third-degree assault of a child: How do you plead?”
“Guilty.”
Ali made no other statements Tuesday. Wilson sentenced him to eight years in prison. He will be on probation for life. Prosecutors and Ali’s defense attorney Laura Shaver recommended the sentence as part of the plea agreement.
The path to this point was long and winding.
Ali grew up in a Syrian camp for Palestinian refugees. In 2010, he left for the United States. He studied electrical engineering and worked in aerospace. He served as an advocate for refugees from Syria.
He was originally charged with two counts of first-degree child molestation in 2017. The third charge was added recently.
He agreed to a bench trial, leaving it to a judge to decide his guilt based on a review of investigative records. Ali later admitted to the abuse in a two-page letter to a judge dated Feb. 26, 2018.
“There are no words in my English vocabulary that can compensate for or erase my terrible mistakes in the past,” Ali wrote.
Judge Wilson was set to sentence him and formally issue his findings March 15, 2018. Prosecutors pushed for him to spend more than seven years behind bars. His attorney requested two years of confinement and treatment.
Ali wrote in his letter that he “must accept the outcomes of this case regardless of the situation, and I must do everything to prevent this from happening again.”
“I have promised myself to comply with whatever the court orders to the best of my ability,” he added.
The judge put out a $2.5 million arrest warrant for him.
Investigators believe he first traveled from the United States to Dubai. Detectives later learned he was living in Sweden and from there he went to the Netherlands. He was apprehended there.
In July 2019, American authorities requested Ali be extradited. A two-year saga in Dutch courts followed, as the south Everett man filed multiple appeals.
His last appeal was denied in early November. After 3½ years overseas, he was brought back to Everett, where he was booked into the Snohomish County Jail. He has been there on $2.5 million bail since.
Shaver argued the 900-plus days he spent in Dutch custody should have been subtracted from his eight-year sentence. The judge disagreed.
“I’m glad Mr. Ali wants people to heal, but the problem here is that’s not going to happen,” Wilson said. “When we talk about healing, we talk about going back to what we had. That’s never going to be. This child is never going to get back what she had. That’s gone.”
The woman’s father told Wilson that Ali “prolonged the duration of our suffering and agony.”
The father said Ali stole her innocence, but “he couldn’t steal her character.”
Jake Goldstein-Street:
