Buttafuoco Draws Maximum 6 Months in Amy Fisher Rape

Joey Buttafuoco, the married man who belatedly admitted an affair with the underage Amy Fisher, was sentenced Monday to the maximum six months in jail for statutory rape.

Buttafuoco, handcuffed and smirking, also was fined $5,000 and put on five years’ probation.

Only minutes earlier, Fisher, now 19, faced Buttafuoco for the first time since she shot his wife, Mary Jo, on May 19, 1992. In a nervous, barely audible voice, she spoke of the ill-fated relationship that began “when I was a 16-year-old with braces.”

“This man took me to expensive restaurants and cheap motels,” she said softly. “I am sad to say that he taught me well. He taught me to disrespect myself and to deceive my parents. . . . “

Her head bowed and eyes never leaving her written statement, she mumbled: “Your honor, when this relationship began . . . I was a 16-year-old teen-ager shown a world that I was not ready for, a world of elaborate spending and fast boats.”

She apologized again to Mary Jo Buttafuoco and her family. But she added:

“I know with all my heart that if Mr. Buttafuoco had permitted me to cross the bridge between adolescence and adulthood unmolested, I would not be where I am today.”

Buttafuoco, 37, glared at Fisher as she spoke.

A year ago in the same courthouse, Fisher had been sentenced to five to 15 years for shooting Mrs. Buttafuoco, who still has a bullet lodged next to her brain.

Mrs. Buttafuoco, 38, who has steadfastly stood by her husband throughout the chain of events, did not attend the sentencing.

But hordes of reporters and camera crews--including one from “Comedy Central”--swarmed the courthouse. The case had launched TV movies, talk-show jokes and a media frenzy. Last month, after more than a year of denying he had relations with Fisher, Buttafuoco pleaded guilty.

Later, in a written response to questions, Fisher said: “I kept waiting for him to say, ‘I’m sorry’ to me for what happened, and he didn’t.”

Buttafuoco could be released from the county jail in as little as four months.