JOSEPH BROOKES, "YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE" SONGWRITER CHARGED IN SEXUAL ASSAULTS

The songwriter who penned the Oscar-winning classic love song– “You Light Up My Life” has been arrested and charged with raping and sexually assaulting 11 women that he lured through a Craigslist ad.

According to a report in the New York Times, Joseph Brooks, 71, surrendered early Tuesday and appeared later in State Supreme Court on a 91-count indictment.

Brooks allegedly lured the women from the Pacific Northwest to his East Side Manhattan apartment from 2005 to 2008 using Craigslist and a talent Web site, the Manhattan district attorney announced.

His lawyer, Jeffrey C. Hoffman, said Mr. Brooks would plead not guilty, adding that the charges “look preposterous.”

Mr. Hoffman said his client suffered a stroke in April 2008, suggesting it would play a role in his defense. Mr. Brooks appeared in court, looking disheveled in an ill-fitting jacket and baggy pants.

Prosecutors said he was strong and fit at the time of the attacks.

Also charged was his personal assistant, Shawni Lucier, 42, of Federal Way, Wash., who prosecutors said helped recruit the 18- to 30-year-old women. She faces nine counts of criminal facilitation, a misdemeanor and is scheduled to surrender next week, prosecutors said. She did not respond to a telephone message at her home.

Robert M. Morgenthau, the district attorney, said that prosecutors were looking into other possible sexual assaults by Mr. Brooks, one as far back as 1970. Four of the alleged victims were 18 and one was 19, he said.

He said that Mr. Brooks was charged with using Craigslist to advertise for aspiring actresses in the Seattle and Portland areas, paying for their air fares to New York. Once they got to his apartment at 130 East 63rd Street, Mr. Morgenthau said, “they were forced to drink a large glass of wine” and assaulted. The wine may have been drugged, he said.

Two of them later complained to rape counselors. The others were tracked down after investigators seized Mr. Brooks’s computer, the district attorney said.

Ms. Lucier “knowingly” helped recruit the women, Mr. Morgenthau said, at times reassuring mothers concerned about letting their daughters travel alone to New York to meet Mr. Brooks for possible film roles. Ms. Lucier was present when the young women arrived at the apartment but left during the rapes, Mr. Morgenthau said.

“My only regret is that facilitation only carries a sentence of a year,” he said.