White Plains is a city of contrasts where million dollar homes co-exist with slums that look as if they were sets of a movie. The rich who fled New York City to live in safer environs and better school districts are never more than a mile away from both the working class and the impoverished who were priced out of New York.

Less than 20 minutes from the Bronx by car, I’ve ended up in White Plains on many day hikes that began in Van Cortlandt Park, traveling into Yonkers’ Tibbetts Brook Park then picking up the Bronx River pathway. Those hikes were always stunning (though long) but the tranquil beauty of my hikes was often interspersed with the odd relic or ritual site. Stubs of candles, the smell of incense and sometimes the dead chicken or two.

“Voodoo” or in reality Santeria, Condomble, and the other Afro-Carib traditions, has crept from the slums of the Bronx well into upstate New York. Interesting, exotic, and largely harmless the traditions are often slandered by others, even other practitioners of esoteric religions like Wicca, and due to the secrecy inherent in the religion it has been an uphill struggle for adherents to be accepted in mainstream society.

As if there wasn’t enough bad press surrounding the worship of mysterious gods from Africa, along comes Hector Aviles, 51, who has got himself dubbed the “Voodoo rapist” because of the sex scheme he was caught using to rape teen girls:

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A 51-year-old man who claimed to practice Voodoo has admitted telling underage girls that if they refused to have sex with him terrible things would happen to them and their families.

Hector Aviles of Yonkers pleaded guilty Thursday to second- and third-degree rape, said Janet DiFiore, the Westchester district attorney. Aviles could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.

DiFiore said that at various times in 2006, Aviles told three girls, ages 16 and 14, that he could help them with such problems as boys and parents if they engaged in a sexual “ritual” with him. He warned that if they backed out, he would make bad things happen to them and their relatives.

The district attorney said that when he was arrested, Aviles told police he practiced Voodoo.

If by Voodoo he means child rape then we can assume he’s a Voodoo practitioner. However I’m pretty sure the only religion he practiced was the religion of selfishness, perversion and depravity. This person’s rape and torment of those poor girls was disgusting enough, hell worthy if you were a Christian I’m sure, but his actions smear an entire religion that already struggles with equal treatment and that makes his crimes un-American as well.

And more shockingly it isn’t the first time Aviles pulled this scheme when he raped a child:

Aviles was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in 1997. In that case, the girl was threatened and intimidated into not reporting the crime for fear that Aviles would cast a “hex” on her family, prosecutors said.

Hector Aviles is a deviant, and like all deviants he’s unwilling to take responsibility for his actions and seek to excuse his crimes. Let’s hope that the people of White Plains can see through his lies and not use his crimes to attack the growing number of Santeria devotees whose only crime is belonging to a religion which is still fashionable to hate.