BOSTON (AP) - An Internal Revenue Service agent was sentenced Tuesday to up to eight years in prison for the gunpoint rape of a 21-year-old college intern at the IRS.
James Clarke, 46, of Newton, was sentenced after the now 23-year-old victim in an impact statement said “I am extremely grateful that I am alive,” according to The Boston Globe.
Clarke was convicted by a jury in December of six charges including aggravated rape.
Clarke was assigned to the IRS’s criminal investigation office in Boston when he invited the woman for drinks at a bar on the last day of her summer internship in July 2017, according to testimony.
The woman took the stand and said she assumed co-workers would be joining them and was surprised it was just the two of them.
She said he bought her five or six drinks and then drove her to South Station to catch a bus home.
In his car in a parking garage, he handcuffed her, choked her, shoved his gun in her mouth, and sexually assaulted her, she testified.
Clarke testifying in his own defense called the encounter “playful” and consensual.
Defense attorney Robert Sheketoff said Clarke led an exemplary life and 100 people wrote letters of support to the court.
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