Man gets 18 years for MU campus rapes
A man was sentenced to 18 years in prison for two sexual assaults he admitted to committing on the University of Missouri campus.
Zachery Jones received the punishment from Judge Kevin Crane on Monday in the Boone County court. Jones pleaded guilty to one count of rape and another count of attempted rape.
The judge sentenced him to exactly what prosecutor Jessica Caldera recommended – five years on the attempted rape charge and 13 years on the rape charge to run consecutively. Jones will need to serve 85 percent of the 13-year sentence before he is eligible for parole, Caldera told ABC 17 News.
University police arrested Jones in March 2016 for the two early-morning attacks. Police claim Jones first threw a woman to the ground near Mumford Hall at Hitt Street and University Avenue. The victim fought him off, police said, and call 911. The second attack happened later that morning. The woman led Jones back to her residence hall, where she escaped inside. Surveillance footage from outside the hall helped police find Jones.
The latter survivor, who lives out of state, submitted an impact statement to Crane for the hearing. The two-page statement describes the assault, and its effect on her. She said Mizzou made her feel safe as she walked on campus around 5 a.m. on March 5.
“No amount of time that Zachery Jones spends in a jail cell will change how I feel about what he did to me,” the statement reads. “One year or one hundred years in prison, I will still be a victim of rape, and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. What Zachery Jones did to me will always be a part of my life, but I will never let it define who I am or what I’m worth.”
The woman was walking back to her residence hall from a fraternity party, she said, a walk that usually takes seven to ten minutes. Jones jumped out of the bushes outside of the Student Center, just 100 feet from her residence hall, and slammed her into the concrete.
The assault led her to feelings of suicide, and fears that she may always need anti-depressants.
“I can only pray he never does this to anyone else,” she wrote. “I want my story to be heard, and I want to do everything in my power to reduce the cases of rape and sexually violent crimes on college campuses. This is every girls’ worst fear.”
Neither Jones nor his lawyer, assistant public defender Jeremy Pilkington, made an argument in court Monday.
Caldera told ABC 17 News that the survivor’s walking alone that morning did not give Jones the right to attack her.
“Basically, I often hear victims and/or their family members talk about what they should’ve done differently,” Caldera said. “Our society’s instinct to blame the victim often creates another layer of victimization. While it may be human nature to wish we’d made different decisions in hindsight, I want people to know that even when people–in particular, college women–do everything right, someone like Zachery Jones can still make them a victim.
Caldera also credited the woman for getting Jones back to the residence hall, where suerveillance cameras were able to capture his image.
“Her quick-thinking actions helped law enforcement apprehend him very quickly, which protected other women,” Caldera said.
