Man sentenced to year of house arrest for raping wife

Judge James P. MacElree II sentenced a 33 year old mushroom company worker to 11½ to 23 months in Chester County Prison, but granted parole on the jail term, leaving a year of home confinement for the sexual assault of his 28 year old wife while she was visiting his home. The charge of sexual assault, a 2nd degree felony in Pennsylvania, carries a sentence maximum of 10 years.

The victim, who appeared in MacElree’s courtroom for the sentencing but did not address the judge, told a prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney John H. Pavloff, that she did not want the couple’s two children to have to visit their father in prison. “He’s a good father,” Pavloff said she told him.

According to court records, the man admitted to his estranged wife that he had had sex with her while she slept on his sofa one night when she visited him after their initial separation. When asked how many times he had had sex with her in that way, he replied that it was just “a one-time thing.”

He also told his victim that she had “like half woke up” during the incident.

MacElree also sentenced the man to one year’s probation and 200 hours of community service for a single count of invasion of privacy. That charge stemmed from the defendant’s admission that he had taken photos of the woman while she was asleep, exposing her breasts and buttocks.

The victim found out about the crimes when she stayed overnight at his East Nottingham trailer to see their daughter off on her first day of school. Later that month, she went to his home and saw pictured her husband took of her naked and in various states of undress. The worst pictures showed the woman being raped by her husband.

The victim determined that she had been sedated by her attacked because she saw his hands and clothes that she had been wearing the night of the assault. The husband gave his victim wife a cup of tea with a knockout drug.

She later confronted him with the information about the photos. In a telephone conversation that was taped by state police, he acknowledged having sex with her. “It was like a one-time thing,” he told the woman.

Pavloff said after the sentencing that there was no physical evidence to finally determine where and when the assault took place. The defendant admitted in his guilty plea to assaulting the woman in August 2006, but the victim maintains that it must have happened in September.
The woman, who has custody of their children, filed for divorce in February.

The man was also sentenced to a year probation for unlawful possession of a gun.