An angry Manhattan judge slammed a convicted rapist with a 15-year prison sentence today — the maximum allowed — for sneaking into a room at the Dream Hotel in Midtown, where he worked, and raping a drunk, passed out guest in her bed as her drunken boyfriend lay passed out beside them.
“This crime was not only violent and calculated, but it was a master class in cowardice,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Jill Konviser told the rapist, Jaime Marin Lopez Mendoza, of Queens.
“This was from my perspective the ultimate example of depravity,” the judge said.
Mendoza had come across the 27-year-old victim previously on the evening of the attack in Dec. 2009, when she and her boyfriend had trouble getting into their room.
He waited until the couple were passed out — either staying in the room or letting himself back inside later. The victim was woken up by the rape, and began screaming, authorities said.
The victim, who did not attend the sentencing, said in a statement read aloud by prosecutor Jung Park that even today, more than a year later, she suffers flashbacks and fear. “It is impossible not to remember,” she wrote.
Mendoza made barely-cohearent protestations of innocence when given his turn to speak at the sentencing.
“I just want to say God bless you all, and to forgive us all,” he said. “I will continue to fight for my freedom here because I am not a rapist,” he claimed.