By Gordon Dritschilo
THE RUTLAND HERALD
A man who confessed to sexually assaulting a Castleton University student in a campus parking lot would avoid jail time under a plea deal entered this week.
Raymond Gingras pleaded guilty Thursday in Rutland County criminal court to a single felony charge of sexual assault in exchange for a sentence of five years to life, suspended, with a minimum of eight years of probation. A charge against Gingras for allegedly violating his pre-trial conditions of release was dropped as part of the deal, according to court records.
Judge Cortland Corsones ordered a pre-sentencing investigation, including a psychosexual evaluation and said the report would help him decide whether to accept the plea deal. Corsones asked about the victim’s stance, to which Assistant State’s Attorney Daron Raleigh replied that the plea deal was based on the victim’s support for a “non-incarcerative sentence.”
“It’s somewhat unusual for these kind of offenses, certainly,” Corsones said.
During the hearing, Gingras admitted that in October 2016 he, then 24 and an accountant living in Colchester, was visiting his girlfriend who was a student at Castleton University. He said he met the victim — then 18 and also a student — through mutual friends and, after his girlfriend passed out at a party, he invited the victim outside to smoke.
Gingras made sexual advances that the victim rejected, he admitted Thursday, and he then sexually assaulted her as she continued to tell him “no.”
The woman reported the incident to police soon after, according to affidavits, and they eventually served him with a court order requiring him to submit a DNA sample. Police said Gingras responded by saying he was not worried because it wasn’t him and that he walked away laughing. Police said he also contacted his then ex-girlfriend urging her to “not talk to any authorities about the situation. And I know you know what I mean when I say the situation.”
When a DNA sample was finally collected, police said, it was a match.
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