Before the night of June 9, 2001, she was a different woman, eager to begin graduate school, hopeful for the future.

But on Tuesday, as she stood in Ramsey County District Court, she was a rape victim, imploring District Judge John Guthmann to impose the maximum sentence on her attacker, Trinidad Perez-Carrino, 32, of Minneapolis.

She spoke of migraines and two years of medication to fight them; graduate school hopes delayed a year; the joy of giving birth marred by memories of a rape exam. And she has difficulty with rain after having been brutalized in the mud during a pouring rain.

"This is not who I was meant to be," she told the judge.

Perez-Carrino, when asked to speak, maintained his innocence and asked the judge to "have pity on me."

He was given the maximum penalty: Consecutive sentences totaling more than 16 years for the charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping. Said Guthmann, "The violence was extreme."

Last month, it took a jury less than two hours to convict Perez-Carrino, who was arrested in December after authorities discovered that a DNA sample he provided in connection with a recent alleged assault matched the semen sample taken from his 2001 victim.

In testimony during the trial, the victim, now 31, said she and a friend went to Minneapolis' Warehouse District on June 9, 2001, to have a few drinks and go dancing. The woman's friend met a man on the dance floor and, at closing time, he offered them a ride home.

Instead, he kept driving, the victim testified, and after they screamed for him to stop, he pulled off Interstate 35W at County Road D in New Brighton, and they ran from the car.

He followed, beat both about the head, and while the friend escaped, he threw the victim face down into the mud and then raped her. The attacker fled when he saw lights approaching.

On Tuesday, the victim recalled the pain of having 30 stitches and staples put in her head, and the return visit to the hospital after her eyes swelled shut.

"In the months following the assault, I could not be alone," she added. "I was a prisoner in my body and in my mind."

After graduate school, she moved across the country, she said, out of fear that she might run into "this sick person" again.

Before sentencing Perez-Carrino, Guthmann said he found no reason to elaborate on his "horrific conduct." He had an effect on the victim's life in ways only she could explain, Guthmann said.

Asked if he had questions after the sentence was announced, Perez-Carrino simply shook his head, and turned quickly to the courtroom door.

Charges against him in the more recent assault are pending in Hennepin County District Court.

Anthony Lonetree • 612-673-4109