BOSTON — Gary Zerola, a Boston lawyer who has been accused of rape by at least a dozen women, was sentenced to serve up to 10 years in prison for the rape of a woman back in 2021.
In Suffolk Superior Court on Monday, July 15, 2024, Judge Mary Ames sentenced Zerola to a minimum of five and a maximum of 10 years in jail.
Last month, Zerola, who worked as a prosecutor in Essex County for a year before transitioning to private practice as a criminal defense attorney, was found guilty by a Suffolk Superior Court jury after five hours of deliberation. He was, however, acquitted of charges of aggravated rape and burglary related to the 2021 rape.
Zerola’s accuser stated that she met him through a female friend who was dating him in 2021, when she was 21 and he was 49, and in January of that year, all three of them attended a private party in the North End.
“Zerola paid the entire $2,000 bar tab and tipped staff generously while saying he planned to have a ‘threesome’ with the two women, although they expressed no such interest,” prosecutors wrote in documents obtained by The Boston Globe.
After the party, the intoxicated woman vomited in the backseat of Zerola’s car as he drove her home. Upon arriving at her apartment, Zerola and her friend helped her upstairs.
Prosecutors said that as Zerola attempted to undress the woman and “tuck her into bed,” her friend intervened and escorted him out of the apartment. Zerola then sent the victim’s friend home in an Uber and then returned alone to the sleeping woman’s apartment.
At 2 a.m., the woman awoke to Zerola raping her.
“She pulled away, screamed at him to leave, and reported the rape immediately by FaceTime video call to her friend,” according to a document written by the prosecution obtained by The Boston Globe. “The friend noted the victim’s distraught reaction, and saw and heard Zerola in the background as he falsely claimed that the victim had invited him to take her keys and come back.”
According to prosecutors, Zerola then left the apartment, and later that day, the woman went to a hospital for a sexual assault examination and reported the rape to the police.
Zerola had previously been acquitted in three rape trials. Last summer, after a four-day trial, he was acquitted of allegedly raping a 23-year-old woman on a couch in 2016 following a night of partying in the North End, despite her testimony that he raped her and only stopped when she got up to wake her friend, who was casually dating Zerola at the time. In 2008, two separate juries found him not guilty of rape and attempted rape.
Additionally, he has had sexual assault charges dropped in Miami Beach and New Orleans, while the statute of limitations has expired on at least three allegations from the 1990s, according to court filings obtained by The Boston Globe.
