But Common Pleas Judge Gwendolyn Bright would not hear of it, and sentenced Rosario based on the deal he agreed to on July 31: 12 1/2 to 25 years in prison, 15 years of probation afterward and a lifetime of having to register as a sex offender.

"I felt I was forced to take the plea. I feel I never had a chance to declare my innocence," a shaky-voiced Rosario, 36, said in his losing bid for a trial.

"I was scared. I'm still scared," he continued, his hands cuffed behind his back. "I can't live with 12 to 25 years for something I didn't do."

Before moving on to hear victim-impact statements, the judge concluded that Rosario had "knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily entered into the negotiated guilty plea."

His crimes on Feb. 24, 2008, nearly turned fatal when his 30-year-old rape victim, in an attempt to escape, jumped from her third-floor bedroom window on South Street near 2nd in Queen Village.

She suffered broken ribs, spinal damage and permanent brain damage.

She was near death and was placed in a medically induced coma for five weeks, the victim's mother told the judge.

Next came weeks in rehabilitation centers for the victim, who can no longer work as a paralegal, her mother said.

"This sort of criminal really doesn't have a chance to change his life," she said of Rosario, who has two drug convictions in New York.

"It's outrageous that he would come in here and try a cheap legal trick like he did today," the victim's father said.

He bristled at Rosario's confession of being scared. "There were two victims on Feb. 24 who were nervous and scared. They weren't sitting in a courtroom wearing a tie," he said.

"You don't expect to be confronted by a stranger and forced to take off your clothing and forced to see her raped," said the second victim, now 25, who had spent the night with her friend.

Rosario, when given another opportunity to speak, shocked the court when he blamed the rape victim for her injuries.

"None of this would have ever happened if that woman didn't fall out the window," he insisted.

Having to jump to escape from Rosario was especially difficult for the victim, who, her mother said, witnessed in person people jumping from the World Trade Center to their deaths on 9/11.

"Even having lived through something like 9/11, she made a conscious decision that what happened to her was even worse than that," Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti said.

Jeremy-Evan Alva, Rosario's attorney, said he would appeal the case.

The night before the attack, the two victims had been with friends in a bar celebrating that the older woman was moving out to live with her boyfriend.

Rosario knew someone in that group, and tagged along when they went back to the victim's apartment about 2 a.m.

The owner of the apartment and her friend awoke to find Rosario on a second-floor couch. They repeatedly asked him to leave before they went back up to the third floor to prepare for work.

Instead of leaving, Rosario went into the bedroom with a knife and ordered both women to undress.

At a preliminary hearing last year, the visiting woman testified that Rosario raped her friend, using a plastic Rite Aid bag as a condom.

After he left the room the women agreed to escape by jumping out the window, the visiting woman testified. Her friend, who already had one leg out of the window, jumped when Rosario burst back into the room.

He called the woman a "stupid bitch," then fled, passing her broken body on the South Street sidewalk, her friend testified.