New details emerged in court Wednesday about a serial sex offender charged with sexually assaulting an MIT student in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood last weekend.
Thirty-three-year-old Nahom Getaneh is charged with assault to rape and indecent assault and battery, according to the Suffolk District Attorney's Office. He was arraigned Wednesday in Boston Muncipal Court and ordered held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing on Monday. He also has a bail hearing scheduled for Monday for failing to register as a sex offender.
"I am grateful this serial sex offender has been apprehended and will be held accountable," Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement issued following Wednesday's hearing.
MIT police said the student was attacked around 11:45 p.m. Saturday in a public alley by the back entrance to the sorority where she lived on Beacon Street near Massachusetts Avenue. She was attacked from behind after the man approached her on a bicycle asking for food, according to a statement sent to the MIT community.
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"The victim/survivor fought off the perpetrator and called 911. The perpetrator fled on a bicycle," the warning to the MIT community said.
Chafik Hamadeh, the owner of the Quality Mart store at the corner of Beacon Street and Massachusetts Avenue, said police came in to his store Monday and asked for his surveillance video, which he shared with them.
He said the video showed the suspect pretty clearly, and you could see him following a woman into an alley.
According to court documents, the woman was locking her bike up in the public alley when Getaneh followed her into her apartment in the sorority. They said he sexually assaulted her in the laundry room and threatened her by saying, "Do you want to die?"
Police said the victim was eventually able to fight off her attacker, and they found him three days later near the intersection of Massachuetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard in Boston's South End.
This isn't the first time Getaneh has been accused of a violent crime. In 2007, he was convicted of indecent assault and battery on a teenager in Cambridge. And he is listed as a Level 3 sex offender, though he failed to register last year as required by law.
"I'm glad to see accountability in this case and justice served," Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said of the case. "No single incident is something that we look away from, and whatever part of the city that is happening, we're going to devote resources to making sure that everyone is safe."
The incident has area college students on edge, but they were also relieved to learn an arrest has been made.
"It's scary," one student told NBC10 Boston. "We're in a city, we're all just trying to grow up and enjoy our time here."
