22-YEAR-OLD CONFRONTS HER ASSAILANT IN COURT
Ex-MIT athlete pleads guilty, apologizes
A Boston University grad and the former MIT athlete who sexually assaulted her came face-toface one last time in court yesterday — with the guilty 22-year-old forced to apologize for what he did two years ago in a dorm room.
“I would like to apologize to (the victim) and her family that are here today for my inexcusable behavior that night,” Samson Donick, who played guard for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Engineers basketball team, told Suffolk Superior Judge Janet L. Sanders’ packed downtown courtroom.
“She’s incredibly courageous and it breaks my heart that I’m responsible for this. I feel deep, deep shame for having caused (the victim) to have to go through this, and the most important thing for me today is that her and her family can begin to finally move forward,” Donick added. “I take full responsibility for my terrible behavior, and I’m extremely sorry and I always will be. I always will be.”
The victim, also 22, tearfully told Donick, “The one thing about the past is it can never be changed ... But the beauty of life is with each day, we are able to make new memories and make the necessary changes to live a better life.”
Donick, who was his high school’s salutatorian, pleaded guilty to indecent assault and battery — reduced from aggravated rape — as well as assault and battery, and breaking and entering in the nighttime to commit a misdemeanor.
On Oct. 18, 2015, while he and some buddies were visiting other students at BU, Donick broke away and walked into 10 dorm rooms over four floors of a 26-story tower on Harry Agganis Way before crawling into the sleeping victim’s bed.
“I entered the room. I touched her ... and when she asked me to stop, I left,” Donick told the court.
Acknowledging the case’s disposition was “unusual,” Sanders acquiesced to the victim’s insistence she not be put through the trauma of a trial and sentenced Donick to five years’ probation on GPS monitoring. She also ordered him to seek sex-offender treatment and perform 1,000 hours of community service so he’ll never forget “the majority of people are not blessed with the advantages he’s had.”
Donick will be required to register as a sex offender in California, where he and his family live on the Tiburon Peninsula on San Francisco Bay — a celebrity enclave and one of the priciest slices of real estate in the country.