A jury found a Scranton man guilty of rape of an 18-year-old autistic woman Thursday after a four-day trial before Lackawanna County Judge Michael Barrasse.<\/p>\n
Mario Valentine, 42, formerly of 1924 Lafayette St., faces up to 35 years of incarceration at the time of sentencing, according to District Attorney Brian Gallagher.<\/p>\n
Valentine was was arrested on Jan. 6, 2024, after Scranton police responded to Geisinger Community Medical Center for the report of a sexual assault.<\/p>\n
The victim suffers from autism spectrum disorder and pervasive developmental disorder, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe jurors needed only 90 minutes to convict the defendant of rape of a mentally disabled person, aggravated indecent assault of a person suffering a mental disability, and indecent assault of a person suffering a mental disability,\u201d Gallagher said. \u201cWe are glad that justice was served and the jurors held the Defendant accountable for his repulsive actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Upon release Valentine will be required to register for the rest of his life as a sex offender with the Pennsylvania State Police, pursuant the Pennsylvania Sexual Offenders Registration and Notification Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jury found a Scranton man guilty of rape of an 18-year-old autistic woman Thursday after a four-day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[46,202,201,182,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-187709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-courts","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}