crime
Víctor Peña was found guilty of all charges against him last week.
Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe
The man found guilty 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 kidnapping and the 10 counts of aggravated rape he faced. The kidnapping charge could have cost him 25 years, while each rape charge could have cost him 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors sought a harsh sentence in line with a murder charge, arguing that kidnapping and rape “really kill someone,” according to reporters in the courtroom. Judge Anthony Campo reportedly cited the abundance of video and photo evidence in the case and said the impact of the crimes is soul-stealing. The victim, he said, showed 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 repeatedly raped her over three days before police broke the door and rescued her.
For the sentencing, the woman submitted a victim impact statement, but it was not read aloud in court, according to reporters in the courtroom.
The woman, who was 23 at the time, said the last thing she remembered the night of her abduction was being drunk while dancing at a Boston bar with her sister and friends. The next thing he remembered was waking up naked the next day 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 reach the door, which was locked with a deadbolt that required a key from the inside.
She told jurors that Peña threatened to kill her and that she eventually gave up fighting his sexual assaults because she “didn’t want to die.”
Peña had pleaded not guilty to the charges. In his own testimony, he said he was trying to help the woman, insisted he was not holding her captive and said she wanted to “have relations” with him.
He has been held without bail since his arrest in 2019.
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