a crime
Victor Peña was found guilty of all charges against him last week.
Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe
The man convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman over three days in Boston in 2019 was sentenced to 29 to 39 years in prison Monday in Suffolk Superior Court.
Last week, a jury convicted Victor Peña, 42, of the kidnapping and 10 counts of aggravated rape he faced. The kidnapping charge could have earned him 25 years in prison, while each rape charge could have brought him 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors sought a harsh sentence consistent with the murder charge, arguing that the kidnapping and rape “really killed someone,” according to courtroom reporters. Judge Anthony Campo reportedly cited the abundance of video and photo evidence in the case and said the impact of the crimes was soul-robbing. The victim, he said, displayed remarkable courage.
Authorities said Peña kidnapped the woman, now 27, after she left Hennessy’s in January 2019, holding her captive in his Charlestown apartment, where he raped her repeatedly over three days before police to break down the door and save her.
For the sentencing, the woman submitted a victim impact statement, but it was not read aloud in court, according to courtroom reporters.
The woman, who was 23 at the time of the incident, testified that the last thing she remembers on the night of her abduction was feeling drunk while dancing at a Boston bar with her sister and friends. The next thing he remembered was waking up naked the next morning in Peña’s apartment. She said she tried to escape twice while he slept, but both times he woke up and grabbed her before she could get to the door, which was locked with a bolt that required a key from the inside.
She told jurors Peña threatened to kill her and eventually she stopped fighting his sexual assaults because she “didn’t want to die.”
Peña pleaded not guilty to the charges. In his own evidence, he said he was trying to help the woman, insisted he was not holding her captive and said she wanted to “have a relationship” with him.
He has been held without bail since his arrest in 2019.
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