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.
