Then Herald News
Senay convicted of raping disabled man
A 53-year-old Fall River man was sentenced to prison Friday after being convicted by a Superior Court jury of raping a mentally retarded man multiple times between May and October 2006.
William Senay was found guilty of rape and indecent assault and battery of a mentally retarded person.
The commonwealth recommended 10 to 15 years. Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara sentenced Senay to 6 to 10 years in state prison. Furthermore, Senay will be placed on probation for 10 years upon his release. The conditions of his probation stipulate that he must stay away from the victim and the victim’s family, he cannot work or volunteer with disabled individuals, he must register as a sex offender and he must attend counseling for sex crime perpetrators.
Additionally, he will be required to wear a global positioning system monitoring bracelet for the duration of his probation.
“It was a relief for my entire family,” the victim’s aunt, Lorrie Pierce, said after the conviction and sentencing. “We’ve been through this almost 3½ years.”
Second Assistant District Attorney Silvia Rudman prosecuted the case for the commonwealth. The trial lasted three days and the jury deliberated for about four hours.
Rudman also prosecuted Senay’s codefendant, Buddy Smith, in January. In that case, Smith, 23, of Fall River, was convicted of raping the same mentally retarded man on multiple
occasions between January 2004 and October 2006. Smith was sentenced on Jan. 16 to serve 7 to 10 years in state prison, to be followed by 10 years of probation with many of the same conditions that Senay received.
Pierce said of the defendants, “These people believed in their own minds that they could rise above the law, from the local police department to the state agencies to the district attorney’s office. Against any odd did anyone believe we could get a conviction. But we did it for my nephew and disabled people of all ages.”
Pierce said mentally retarded victims of such crimes do not have a “voice of their own,” and that “we must believe in them and justice will prevail.”
Her message to others who may be victimized is “tell someone. Don’t allow these perpetrators to control you. There is help out there.”
Colleen M. Lutkevich, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition of Families and Advocates, said, “In order to convict, this jury had to believe that the young man with obvious intellectual disability was testifying truthfully about what had been done to him and who did it.”
The victim, described publicly only as “J”, had testified that Smith and others had taken him from his Tiverton home and raped him in specific locations in Fall River. At the Senay trial, he added detail about “at least five” occasions after Smith’s arrest when he was picked up by Senay, threatened if he did not get in the car, and taken to Senay’s apartment. There Senay forced him to have oral sex. J also named others who, he said, took turns raping him.
Pierce stated in her victim impact statement before sentencing, “To fathom the reality that this man, Mr. Senay, raped, sexually assaulted and terrorized such a happy, pure, innocent, disabled young man to satisfy his own selfish, sick, controlling desires is incomprehensible.
“The lifelong lasting effects this has had and will continue to have on J, his mom, his dad and his brother are beyond anything I can put into words. Never again will any of them feel safe in their home, neighborhood or their community.Each and every breath this family takes and every step this family walks will continue to be with enormous fear for their own safety and the safety for each other. This selfish, sick, controlling desire of Mr. Senay has had a tremendous effect on all of us. As much as the enormous love we all share for J has allowed each of us to advocate for and be a voice for him, it has also left each of us scarred for life. We as a family have now been forced to live our lives in such a different light.
“I respectfully request that this court impose the toughest sentence allowed by the state of Massachusetts due to the lifelong sentence J, his mom, dad, myself and our entire family will be left to persevere.”
District Attorney Sutter said, “As I stated after the earlier conviction of co-defendant Buddy Smith, I am very gratified for the victim and his family that they received justice for this horrendous, unconscionable crime. Their tenacity and perseverance were indispensable to the success of this prosecution. Just as before, equally indispensable was the trial advocacy of Second Assistant District Attorney Silvia Rudman. “Once again, she demonstrated her extraordinary talent in proving a complex case.”
E-mail John Moss at jmoss@heraldnews.com.
http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x917906008/Senay-convicted-of-raping-disabled-man
