Crime

Man found guilty in Boston kidnapping, rape trial sentenced to 29-39 years in prison

Victor Peña was found guilty on all the charges against him last week.

Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe

August 1, 2022

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 on Monday in Suffolk Superior Court.

Last week, a jury convicted Victor Peña, 42, of kidnapping and the 10 counts of aggravated rape he was facing. The kidnapping charge could have brought him 25 years, while each count of rape could have resulted in 30 years in prison.

Prosecutors asked for a severe sentence in line with a homicide charge, arguing that kidnapping and rape “really does murder 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 rob the soul. The victim, he said, demonstrated remarkable courage.

Authorities said Peña abducted the woman, who is now 27, after she left Hennessy’s in January 2019, holding her captive in his Charlestown apartment where he raped her repeatedly over the course of three days before police broke down the door and rescued her.

For 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 of the incident, testified that the last thing she remembered on the night of her kidnapping was feeling tipsy while dancing at the Boston bar with her sister and friends. The next thing she recalled was waking up naked the morning after in Peña’s apartment. She said she tried to escape twice while he was asleep, but both times he woke up and caught her before she could reach the door, which was locked by a deadbolt that required a key from the inside.

She told jurors Peña threatened to kill her and she eventually stopped fighting back against 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 didn’t hold her captive, and said that she wanted to “have relations” with him.

He has been held without bail since he was arrested in 2019.