A Broward jury has ordered a Lighthouse Point man to pay $1.1 million to a woman he raped after incapacitating her with chloroform when she worked at his Pembroke Pines pet shop in 1995.
The woman filed a lawsuit against Bianculli in 2022 after learning, because of a separate criminal investigation against Bianculli, that he had saved a videotape of their encounter. The woman, who was 17 at the time (Bianculli was 48), 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.
That was before the tape was discovered by Bianculli’s son and turned over to prosecutors. In 2015, Bianculli was accused of sexually abusing a teenage girl over a six-year period ending in 2011.
The video breathed new life into the 1995 allegations. Too much time had passed to convict him of sexual battery, but Bianculli was charged with two counts of video voyeurism. He pleaded guilty to those charges and the sexual battery charges related to the other teenager in January 2025 and was sentenced to 14 months in jail, which at the time he had already served. He was arrested again in March for failing to register as a sex offender, and he remains in custody at the Broward jail in Pompano Beach.
Broward Circuit Judge Carlos Rodriguez granted a partial summary judgment in the civil case in late October, determining that Bianculli’s culpability was not in question. “There are no material facts at issue and no reasonable juror could differ on finding for the plaintiff,” he wrote in his ruling.
That left the issue of damages, which went before a jury this month and was decided on Friday.
Defense lawyer Adriana Alcalde Padron told jurors to reject the defense assertion that there was anything consensual about the videotaped encounter. “Saying that a 17-and-a-half-year-old child was a willing participant with her 48-year-old boss is a vile argument,” she said in a telephone interview Monday.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.