ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 7, 1996 TAG: 9603070056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
Brian K. Ferguson was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday for what a Roanoke prosecutor called a "predator rape."
Ferguson, 22, pleaded guilty in January to breaking into a Southwest Roanoke home and raping a 36-year-old woman who lived there.
Unlike most rape cases in Roanoke, the victim had never met or even seen her attacker before he showed up at her bedside on a July night. It was "every woman's nightmare," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner said.
"She was a totally innocent victim," Gardner said. "This is the type of scenario that generates movies, that generates stories, that generates nightmares. ... And this woman had to live through it."
On July 17, the woman told police, a stranger walked through an unlocked door of her Grandin Road home about 1 a.m. with a shirt pulled over his face. The woman let Ferguson use her telephone to call a counseling hot line after he said he was having personal problems.
Ferguson then tried to tie the woman up with the electrical cord of a curling iron, but she broke free and ran from the house - only to be captured by Ferguson in the yard and dragged back inside.
After being raped in the living room, the woman suggested that Ferguson get a condom when he began to sexually assault her again. When he did, she fled a second time and called for help at a nearby fire station.
"People have a right to the safety and comfort of their homes," Circuit Judge Robert P. Doherty said in sentencing Ferguson to the maximum punishment for rape and abduction under the terms of a plea agreement reached in January.
Assistant Public Defender Michelle Derrico had asked for less time for Ferguson, whom she described as the most remorseful client she has even encountered. Testimony showed that Ferguson was abusing drugs and experiencing emotional problems at the time of the rape.
"If there was a day in my life that I could take back and relive, it would be that day," Ferguson testified. "If it had happened to someone that I cared for, or to myself, I wouldn't want that person to ever come out."
Ferguson will be eligible for release after he serves 85 percent of his sentence, or about 21 years.
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