421-Year Sentence for Captor Of Girl Saved by Text Message
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BEAUFORT, S.C. — A man who admitted to kidnapping a 14-year-old girl and holding her for more than a week in an underground bunker, raping her daily, was sentenced yesterday to 421 years in prison for a crime the judge called “repulsive.”
Vinson Filyaw pleaded guilty Tuesday, moments before his trial, to charges of kidnapping and 10 counts of criminal sexual conduct, one for each day prosecutors said he held the girl captive a year ago in Kershaw County. The teenager was rescued after she got hold of Filyaw’s cell phone and sent a text message to her mother.
“I have a strong belief you have forfeited your right to be a member of this society,” Judge G. Thomas Cooper said before handing down the sentence. “I can think of no crimes short of murder more repulsive than these.”
After the hearing, the girl, now 15, said she was happy with the sentence, the maximum allowed. She explained how she survived in the bunker: “Hope,” she said, and constantly thinking about “my family; my friends.”
She said she kept trying to send text messages, “hoping they would get out to somebody.”
The teenager had planned to testify at the sentencing, but officials said she was too emotional to speak. The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.
The teenager’s mother hugged her daughter as the girl’s statement was read by a prosecutor in court. She said the ordeal “was every person’s worst nightmare … a nightmare no one should have to endure or survive.”