Former Brazilian Cop Sentenced For String Of Oakland Rapes
OAKLAND (CBS SF) - A former Brazilian police officer was sentenced Friday to multiple terms of life in state prison for his conviction for raping five women in Oakland in 2009.
Jurors deliberated for only a few hours on Feb. 6 before finding 41-year-old Gleiston Andrade guilty of six counts of forcible oral copulation and seven counts of rape against five victims between April 9, 2009, and Oct. 26, 2009.
Prosecutor Erin Kingsbury said Andrade, who worked as a truck driver after he moved to the U.S., picked up his victims on or near International Boulevard in Oakland and then drove them to secluded areas, where he pulled out a gun, forced them to orally copulate him and raped them.
Kingsbury said he drove three of his victims to an industrial area near the High Street Bridge along the Oakland-Alameda border and two of his victims to San Antonio Park in East Oakland.
Four of the victims worked as prostitutes, she said.
In several instances, Andrade told victims he was a police officer, according to Kingsbury.
Andrade was identified as the culprit in every case, and DNA evidence linked him to two of the victims, she said.
Andrade was initially charged with sexually assaulting six victims, but Kingsbury said she had to dismiss some of the charges because one victim was unavailable to testify.
One of the victims, who asked that her name not be used, said at Friday's sentencing hearing that Andrade "took everything from me including my trust of human beings."
Fighting back tears, the woman told Andrade, "My whole life is ruined because of you."
She said, "I was a happy person but I'm bitter now. I want my life back."
The woman said Andrade "held people against their will and made them do what they didn't want to do."
Andrade's lawyer, Colleen Murray, told jurors during the trial that they should find Andrade not guilty because she believed there was little evidence connecting him to the crimes.
Murray said the DNA evidence is contaminated and "should be in question" and that Andrade never even met the victims in the case.
She also said Oakland police had many unsolved cases in which a man who was posing as a police officer was raping women and alleged that "they wanted to pin all of them on Mr. Andrade."
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Allan Hymer said he sentenced Andrade to multiple life terms instead of a single life term because he had opportunities to reflect on what he was doing while he was sexually assaulting his victims and stop what he was doing but he continued on with his assaults.
Andrade used a gun to force most of his victims to disrobe and have sex and in some cases he also forced them to engage in acts that "debased" them, Hymer said.
The judge ordered Andrade to submit to AIDS testing and to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Hymer said Andrade won't be eligible for parole for 195 years.
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