An Orange County, Calif. judge sentenced actor Joseph Hyungmin Son to life in state prison without the possibility of parole in connection with the rape and torture of a woman on Christmas Eve in 1990, according to news reports.
The Orange County Register reported:
The woman, then 19, flew in from out of state to tell the court how “this sad excuse of a human …fed off the terror he inflicted to my body, mind and spirit that night.”
Moments later outside the 11th floor Santa Ana courtroom of Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno, the victim said she took a mental image of Son as a way of “cleansing of the world.”
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Prosecutors said Son and an accomplice beat and pistol-whipped the woman they snatched off the streets of Huntington Beach and repeatedly raped her before dropping her off, naked and bleeding, on a street in Compton.
The case had gone cold but when Son was arrested for an unrelated felony vandalism charge in 2008, authorities took a DNA sample which was then matched to DNA collected during the 1990 investigation.
The victim told the judge before sentencing Friday that she suffers daily post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“I feel debilitating fear come over me and am convinced a hand is coming from behind again,” she said in court. “My emotional scars are intense. My 20s were stripped from my life as I relearned how to walk, see, hear and cope with the outside world again. Joseph Son not only cost me my job at my salon but also my college savings … not to mention the impact it’s made on celebrating Christmas year after year.”
Son, 40, is best known for his role as “Random Task” in the first Austin Powers movie in 1997. He also had a brief and unsuccessful career as a mixed-martial arts fighter.
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