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2 guilty in McKeesport woman's rape
Friday, August 01, 2008

Two men were found guilty yesterday of bursting into a McKeesport apartment and raping a 19-year-old woman while her mother was tied up in the closet.

Jamie D. Chaffin, 27, of North Versailles, and Jerome Washington Jr., 22, of McKeesport, kicked down the door of the apartment, wielding shotguns in the early morning hours of July 20, 2006.

The assailants were searching for the victim's sister, who was holding drugs for Mr. Washington. Once they realized the sister didn't live there, the men tied up the victim's mother and took turns raping the woman for more than an hour.

The victim testified that Mr. Chaffin held a shotgun while raping her and threatened to kill her at one point. When the men were done, she said, they forced her to wash off.

An Allegheny County Common Pleas Court jury found both men guilty of all 10 counts against them, including rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and aggravated assault.

After the assault, the victims quickly called police and the men were apprehended by mid-afternoon. Police recovered a Sony PlayStation and a number of DVDs.

Defense attorneys tried to call the victim's testimony into question because she had smoked marijuana on the night of the attack and later lied about it.

But the suspects admitted they had broken into the house and tied up the mother, and in a statement to police, Mr. Chaffin described having sex with the victim. Though he claimed it was consensual, he described telling her what to do.

In her closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer DiGiovanni said, "There is nothing consensual about what happened in that house that night."

Daniel Malloy can be reached at dmalloy@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1731.
First published on August 1, 2008 at 12:00 am
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