NORTHAMPTON — A former UMass Amherst student convicted of raping a woman who accidentally fell asleep in his dorm room was sentenced to three to five years in state prison on Tuesday.

Judge Richard Carey sentenced Ryder Chilcoff, of Villa Park, California, in Hampshire Superior Court after hearing statements from him and the survivor. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of five to seven years, while Chilcoff’s defense asked for probation or a maximum of four years in prison.

“I am the voice of so many survivors who have been silenced,” the woman said in court, standing a few feet behind Chilcoff and his Los Angeles-based defense team. “I am the voice of those too scared to come forward because the justice system has failed them so many times in the past” and those who were told that their assault happened “because they drank too much or wore revealing clothing or changed their minds.”

On the night of Dec. 8, 2017, the survivor, then a 19-year-old UMass sophomore, went out drinking with friends and then returned to her high-rise dorm building, Assistant District Attorney Sandra Staub said in court. Prosecutors said she was drunk and went into Chilcoff’s room, one floor above her own, by mistake.

Chilcoff, then 21, and some friends were in the room when the woman came in, got into bed and took off her shirt. The two had never met before, prosecutors said.

Staub, chief of the district attorney’s domestic violence and sexual assault unit, said that one of Chilcoff’s friends dressed the woman and offered to help her find her dorm room, but she insisted she was in the right place. Staub said a witness told police that, with her eyes closed, she made sexual “overtures” to Chilcoff.

One witness testified he told Chilcoff, who was sober at the time, “in no uncertain terms” not to engage in sexual conduct with the woman because she was drunk and confused and that he “trusted” Chilcoff to listen, Staub said. She woke up in Chilcoff’s bed eight hours later in a state of undress and in pain; prosecutors said the rape occurred sometime during the early morning hours of Dec. 9.

Chilcoff “knew or should have known that (the survivor) was incapacitated and incapable of giving consent” at the time of the rape, Staub said. The Gazette does not normally identify survivors of sexual assault.

“She will have to deal with its effect for the rest of her life,” Staub said. “Just as his life was before him on Dec. 9, 2017, her life was before her at that same moment.”

She said the other people in Chilcoff’s room that night still struggle with what they could have done differently to prevent the crime.

Evidence presented at trial included the survivor’s medical records and results of scientific tests performed on a used condom found in Chilcoff’s trash can. Chilcoff maintained that they had consensual sex.

The jury deliberated for three hours at the end of a six-day trial and found Chilcoff guilty of a single count of rape on Monday.

He will be required to register as a sex offender.

The survivor, who said she has no memory of the rape, told Judge Carey that she finished college, earned a master’s degree and works a full-time job despite Chilcoff’s “selfish actions,” but “I have a long way to go in my healing process.”

“It’s like, at one point, my emotions were all thrown into a bag and shaken up, and never knowing which one is going to be pulled out,” she said. The rape “put me in a constant defense mode I can’t quite escape from” and affected her relationships with other people.

She said the legal ordeal that lasted more than four years invaded her privacy and exposed all of her actions to scrutiny and criticism.

“I never stopped fighting, no matter how much I wanted to just give up so I wouldn’t have to deal or think about what happened to me,” she said. “But the thing is, I couldn’t let this slide. I couldn’t let someone get away with raping me because of the mere fact that I drank too much and couldn’t remember it. I remember how I felt afterward. I saw the way it changed me.”

In spite of everything she has lost since 2017, the woman said, “My heart, and my ability to show kindness, is the one thing he could never take away from me.”

Defense attorney Alan Jackson said Chilcoff, who withdrew from UMass before being arraigned on the rape charges in April 2018, graduated from Chapman University in California “without incident” and has started several businesses in the ensuing years. He said Chilcoff used “extremely, extremely poor judgment” and his behavior was unlikely to be repeated.

“Ryder’s potential, as he sits before this court, is unlimited,” Jackson said. “He takes and accepts responsibility for all his actions that night and every day forward.”

Chilcoff spoke briefly, as well. He apologized to the survivor and said that he is “very, very sorry, deeply sorry, for my lapse in judgment.”

“This was not my intention at all. Over these 4½ years, I’ve definitely learned my lesson and I just ask the court for mercy,” he said.

Chilcoff’s sentence is to be served at MCI-Cedar Junction, a state prison in Norfolk County, but Carey said he will include a non-binding recommendation that he serve his time at a house of correction instead. Sentencing guidelines allowed for as much as 20 years in prison.

He will receive credit for three days spent in custody to date.

In a statement after the hearing, Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Suhl said “we are satisfied that the court saw this as a serious case” and the sentence provided an example to survivors of sexual assault that “accountability can occur.”

Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.]]>