He said he wanted to adopt a 5- or 6-year-old Caucasian girl, and Mancuso picked Masha out from a videotape sent to him by the adoption agency. Masha said Mancuso was friendly and brought her gifts. But there was also something strange about him. 'I remember asking him if I was gonna get a mother, and he'd say that he wasn't married, and that he didn't think I would,' she said. The nightmare began when Masha flew home with Mancuso to his modest, middle-class house on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. When it was time for bed that first night, he didn't send her to her room - he told her to get in bed with him. The first couple of nights, he touched her leg or chest. Then he started touching her private parts.
'But it always came back to me - couldn't stop it.' 'I'd make myself think of other things when it was happening,' she said.Īnd then, a few days later, he started raping her repeatedly - and taking sexually explicit photographs. To keep her silent he used rewards - as well as threats. 'He'd tell me not to tell anyone, or else something bad would happen,' Masha said. So I just didn't tell anybody, 'cause I was afraid.' A Desperate Search by Police 'He wouldn't tell me what it would be, but he'd just say something bad would happen.
