Probation Officer Treated Woman Under His Supervision As His Masturbatory Toy

Henry G. Cirignano of Wall, the probation officer charged with Official Misconduct and 2 counts of second degree Sexual Assault for coercing a women under his supervision into sexual activity last month, treated his female victim as his “personal masturbatory toy” regularly over a two year period, according to a statement by the victim’s attorneys, Rudikh and Associates and the Law Office of Jordan B. Rickards, Esq.

Cirignano threatened the victim via text message, stating, “As long as you fulfill my needs you stay on the streets.” When she declined, he texted, “Please report to court tomorrow I think you had a curfew violation.”

The attorneys say that Cirignano gave his victim a choice of being violated sexually or go to prison. He demanded photos of the victim and texted her photos of himself shirtless and of male genitalia.

The victim, a drug court probationer, did not get the treatment for addiction she needed, due to Cirignano’s coercion, the attorneys allege. He prevented her from appearing in court by lying to the Judge overseeing the case, telling her that the reason he was not bringing our client’s case into court for periodic monitoring was that the victim had developed cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy.

“These crimes were further facilitated by the fact that as a probation officer, Mr. Cirignano was permitted to visit our client’s home whenever his raging libido demanded, and he made sure to keep her on a heightened ‘level two monitoring’ far past that of any other probationer, because that kept her on a shorter leash and increased his access to, and control over her,” the attorneys said.

The victim saved the text messages from Cirignano, hiding them on her phone under a different name because he checked her phone. Those text messages have been recovered by detectives from the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, the attorneys said. Additionally the victim provided DNA evidence to the Prosecutor’s Office in the form a used condom.