Victor Pena sentenced to 29-39 years for 'horrifying' Boston rape and kidnapping
BOSTON – A judge sentenced Victor Pena to 29-to-39 years in prison after he was convicted last week for a 2019 rape and kidnapping in Boston.
Pena kidnapped a woman in January 2019 after she left Hennessy's bar near Quincy Market and then raped her repeatedly for three days. A ping from her cell phone and surveillance video led police to Pena's apartment in Charlestown where they found her and arrested him.
Prior to sentencing on Monday, a written statement was entered into the record on behalf of the victim in the case.
"When I think about how this affected me, I think about how I never fully came back from those days. A part of me died in that apartment and I mourn for the life I could have lived - was supposed to live," she wrote.
During the trial, Pena's defense described him as a man who was depressed because his mother died, would talk in circles, had a filthy apartment, sucked his thumb as a grown man, and would argue with anyone.
In his closing arguments, defense lawyer Lorenzo Perez argued Pena had a mental defect and should be found not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility. He asked the jury to send Pena to Bridgewater State Hospital.
Prosecutors said Pena knew what he was doing was criminally wrong. They called Pena self-serving, self-gratifying, sadistic, opportunistic, targeted, predatory, and violent.
Jurors came back with a guilty verdict after just a few hours of deliberations.
In her statement, the victim detailed how much the 2019 incident traumatized her, so much so that she has slept with a knife on her bedside table and a field hockey stick behind her bed. The victim wrote that she is afraid every time she goes somewhere she is unfamiliar with.
"This is a horrifying chapter that I've wanted to close from the second that it started and I can't," she wrote. "I'm angry that I had to put the pieces of my life back together and I'm angry that they don't fit back the same way as they used to. I've been trying to figure out a way to end this, but I don't think there is. There will never be an end to the number of ways this has destroyed my life."
