A young woman who was gang raped by three teens in Chinatown last year said she has forever been “emotionally scarred” in a harrowing statement read by prosecutors at the sentencing of one of her assailants Wednesday.
“It has not only emotionally scarred me forever, but it has impacted my friends and family more than I ever would have expected,” the woman said in a victim impact statement read by prosecutor Amanda Goun in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“I wake up in the middle of the night gasping for breath. I can’t breathe because I’m having a massive panic attack in my sleep.”
Defendant Erik Pek and two pals, then 16, snuck out of a now-defunct Brooklyn group home to commit the vicious attack on the drugged-up 33-year-old woman in June 2015.
“I am now a woman who has been shamed, even though the attacks were not my fault,” she wrote. “I’m looked down upon because I’m a victim of rape and assault.”
The teens brutally beat her, robbed her and left her half-naked, unconscious and bleeding in the stairwell of an apartment building.
They even stole her keys and snuck into her Chelsea pad. “Hey Baby!” Pek allegedly called out after opening the victim’s door. But the trio fled when they spotted her male roommate, Goun told Justice Maxwell Wiley, arguing for the maximum of 15 years allowed under the plea deal.
Pek, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison, offered a feeble apology. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I ask her to forgive me, to seek mercy on me, please forgive me.”
Wiley blasted Pek for his role in the sickening crime. “The conduct of the defendant in this case went beyond rash, went beyond dangerous, went beyond reprehensible and was borderline sadistic,” he said before handing down the 14-year term. “Try to make yourself a better person.”
Pek and his cohorts, Emanuel Burrowes and Sanat Asliev, now all 17, copped to rape, robbery and burglary in exchange for a prison sentence in the range of five to 15 years. Burrowes and Asliev have not yet been sentenced.
The troubled teens admitted to the sexual attack on the “barely conscious” victim, which was captured on surveillance video.
The trio allegedly met the woman, who was high on Special K, at a Chinatown internet café, court papers show.
They faced a maximum of 25 years behind bars if convicted at trial.