The 27-year-old homeless man accused of overpowering and raping a 12-year-old girl in her Brooklyn apartment building as he threatened to “violate” her had been arrested for another rape six years earlier and was awaiting sentencing when he targeted his young victim, the Daily News has learned.

Years before his sick attack in NYCHA’s Cooper Park Houses on Thursday, Eric McMichael was arrested for raping a woman he knew inside his victim’s Staten Island home, officials said.

He was accused of forcing his way into her home on Sept. 8, 2019, attacking the woman, then swiping her cellphone before running off. Cops arrested him that October, about six weeks after the attack , the Staten Island Advance reported at the time.

As part of a plea deal hammered out in 2021, McMichael pleaded

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