A Lighthouse Point man facing life in prison pleaded guilty Thursday to charges he sexually abused a teenage girl for six years and filmed a nonconsensual encounter with a different girl in the 1990s.
The pleas put Louis Bianculli, 78, on sex offender probation for the next five years and guarantee he will spend the rest of his life on the Florida sexual predator registry. He was sentenced to a prison term of 14 months, but he had already served a little over 15 months in jail as the case made its way through court.
Bianculli was caught on tape confessing to the extended abuse to the victim’s mother, but that recording was inadmissible because it was obtained without his knowledge and the person who obtained it was not allowed to testify.
“Nothing about what I did was okay. Everything I did was absolutely horrible and wrong,” he told the girl’s mother. “You’re supposed to be someone who’s trusted with a child, not someone … who takes advantage because of their innocence,” he added, referring to himself.
Bianculli was originally arrested in 2015 on charges related to that case, in which he was accused of abusing a girl for six years leading up to her 18th birthday in 2011. According to police and court records, the girl was a family member by marriage and was subdued by chloroform, which hampered her ability to fight back and to remember some of what happened to her.
The victim’s mother recorded Bianculli admitting his wrongdoing, but he was unaware he was being recorded, and she did not go to law enforcement until after the conversations were recorded. After contentious legal arguments, which included the mother’s unwillingness to disclose therapy records that shed light on the recordings, a Broward judge decided the mother would not be allowed to testify.
Without her testimony or the recordings, prosecutors determined that their ability to convince a jury of Bianculli’s guilt was hampered. The victim herself received an estimated $3 million as part of a civil settlement with Bianculli, a fact that would have been disclosed to any jury trying the case.
In a sworn affidavit sent to the Broward State Attorney’s Office, the victim said she no longer wished to be part of the case.
“I will not voluntarily cooperate with any further prosecution of any case against Louis Bianculli,” she said. “I want to close this chapter of my life and preserve my mental and physical health.”
During the investigation, Bianculli’s son provided investigators with a VHS recording showing his father subduing a young girl and having sex with her while she appeared to be unconscious. Investigators determined the victim was a young woman who accused Bianculli of using chloroform to subdue her in 1995, when she was 17 years old and working for him at a pet store in Fort Lauderdale.
That victim went to police at the time, but the state declined to prosecute because they did not think a jury would believe the encounters she described were nonconsensual.
The video changed that, but it came to light only after the statute of limitations had run out. Prosecutors sought to get around that challenge by accusing Bianculli of sexual battery on a minor using a “deadly weapon,” which extended the statute of limitations. The weapon would have been the chloroform, and Bianculli was charged.
But there was no guarantee a jury would determine that it really was chloroform that was used or that chloroform counts as a deadly weapon.
The victim in that case also has a pending civil lawsuit against Bianculli.
Prosecutors ended up reducing the charges in the 1995 case to two counts of video voyeurism, while the three counts of sexual battery on a minor family member remained intact.
Both victims were satisfied that Bianculli would be known as a sexual predator for the rest of his life, and he does face a life sentence if he violates the terms of his five-year probation, which include a 10 p.m. curfew, abstention from pornography and prohibition from working at or visiting places where children congregate, including pet stores.
But the 1995 victim, through attorney Adriana Alcalde Padron, urged Broward Circuit Judge Michael Usan to reject the plea agreement in her case because she wanted to see Bianculli serve prison time.
“She’s glad he’s going to be labeled a predator so that other people will be warned,” Alcalde said, but the victim found the lack of additional time in custody disappointing. “The interests of justice were not served here,” Alcalde said.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. Follow him on Threads.net/@rafael.olmeda.