Wilian Guzman climbed through the window of a Seymour home early one morning last June after learning his estranged wife had moved into the residence with another man.
Once inside he entered the bedroom where the two were asleep. He set upon them, beating the man and raping his wife.
On May 6, a judge sent Guzman to prison for 11 years.
“Breaking into someone’s house, beating the person who is the owner of that house, (and) violently sexually assaulting your own wife in the presence of another person to prove a point is pretty much as close to as bad as it gets,” Judge Frank Iannotti told Guzman at Superior Court in Milford.
Background
Guzman, 32, a former South Benham Road resident, has been behind bars since his arrest hours after the June 29, 2013 incident, which occurred in a North Street residence.
In January he pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine to first-degree burglary and first-degree sexual assault.
The plea deal gave Judge Iannotti discretion to hand down a sentence between seven and 15 years for Guzman to serve behind bars.
‘Egregious, Repugnant, Disgusting’
State’s Attorney Kevin Lawlor began Tuesday’s sentencing by reading the statement given to police by the man whose home Guzman broke into.
The man said he woke up to the sound of a woman screaming. He opened his eyes and Guzman began punching him.
He said Guzman interrogated the two during the beating, choking the man and holding his hair.
Guzman even started taking pictures, ordering the two to pose, the man’s statement said.
Then Guzman raped his wife before leaving the home with her.
“I was scared for my life,” the man told police. “I did not know if he was armed or if there was someone else outside.”
The man still wakes up in the middle of the night thinking he’s being attacked, Lawlor said, jumping out of bed or covering his face.
Questioned by police later that day, Lawlor said Guzman admitted breaking into the home but claimed the sex was consensual.
“This is an egregious, repugnant, disgusting set of facts that doesn’t come along very often,” Lawlor said, asking the judge to sentence Guzman to 15 years in prison.
‘He Had Never Hurt Me In Any Way Before’
But Guzman’s estranged wife — the two are in the divorce process — asked the judge to hand down the minimum jail term.
Crying as she spoke with the assistance of a Spanish interpreter, the woman said Guzman is an excellent father and hard worker.
The two were married in Guatemala 12 years ago, she said.
And although the two will soon be divorced, the family depends on him for money.
“All this happened due to emotional problems,” she said of Guzman’s break-in and sexual assault. “I don’t believe him to be a criminal because nothing like this ever happened before, and he had never hurt me in any way before.”
Guzman’s lawyer, Tara Knight, said that while the facts of the case were “egregious” and “horrible,” her client had no prior criminal record and worked landscaping seven days a week.
“This was one brief, very emotional encounter,” she said. “Mr. Guzman acted poorly, acted horribly, but it was an emotional reaction.”
In a letter read to the judge by an interpreter, Guzman said he was “very regretful for what I did and how it happened.”
“I am not a bad person,” Guzman’s letter said. “I know I made a bad mistake but I’m human and I’m regretful. This is the only mistake I’ve ever made in my life.”
‘As Degrading A Thing You Can Do To Another Person’
The judge told Guzman that as emotional as he may have been that morning last June, “I am sure that you understand and you know and you knew right from wrong.”
“All of us have to stand by the choices that we make. Sometimes you make good ones, sometimes you make poor ones,” the judge said. “You have to hope that the poor ones you make are not so terribly poor that you cannot come back from them.
“I think, Mr. Guzman, that you made a poor decision that night that you’re probably not going to make it all the way back from,” Judge Iannotti went on. “What’s most unfortunate is the people that you hurt along the way.”
And the judge said that while he understood Guzman’s wife’s plea for lenience, the details of the case were simply too shocking to ignore.
“It is factually not the type of case that one looks away from and say well, his wife doesn’t think he’s such a bad guy, if she’s OK with it, we won’t look at it as being all that serious,” the judge said.
“You broke into another person’s house while that person was home in their house believing that they were safe in their house and you did to him what you did and you had your way with your wife in front of him,” Judge Iannotti told Guzman. “This is as degrading a thing you can do to another person.”
The judge then sentenced Guzman to a 25-year prison sentence to be suspended after Guzman serves 11 years behind bars, followed by 10 years of probation.
The judge also ordered Guzman to be registered for life as a sex offender, and barred him from having any contact with either victim while on probation.
