Attempted rapist who was scared off by man wielding a long sword pleads guilty
A man whose attempt to rape a woman in a Wicker Park apartment was interrupted by a swordwielding “Game of Thrones” fan pleaded guilty Thursday, more than three years after the attack.
Francisco Chavez, 42, who’s been held in jail without bond since his arrest, pleaded guilty to charges that included aggravated criminal sexual assault. He received a five-year prison sentence, according to a Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman.
Chavez sneaked into the apartment in the morning hours of June 23, 2017.
Mac Dolan, who was 25 at the time and lived at the apartment, awoke at 5 a.m. to the sound of screaming. He hopped out of bed, flicked on the lights and saw a man he didn’t know punching, choking and trying to rip the clothes off a female guest who’d crashed on his living room couch after a night out.
“I saw the guy standing over her, and she was kicking and screaming,” Dolan told the Chicago Sun-Times days after the attack. “And I just started yelling and running at the guy basically and grabbed the sword that we have on the wall and chased him toward the back stairs.”
It was a 44-inch-long, 10-pound sword that he purchased for $100 weeks earlier during a trip to Medieval Times — a restaurant/theater where dinner is served up with jousting and other knightly theatrics in a space resembling a castle.
Chavez took a moment to register what Dolan was doing.
“He didn’t really start running until he saw me grab the sword,” said Dolan, a software consultant. “Then, he went bug-eyed.
“When I got to the landing at the top of the stairs, I took one cut at him with the sword, but he ducked, and I missed and dented the wood railing.”
Chavez ran down the stairs. Dolan went back to check on the bruised and rattled woman, call 911 and wake a friend visiting from Boston who’d slept through it all on a couch several feet away.
“While we were waiting for police to arrive, I found the guy’s wallet on the ground,” Dolan said. “It must have fallen out of his pocket.”
Around the time the police got there, Chavez walked inside a nearby police station in Logan Square and reported he’d been the victim of a robbery, that his wallet was stolen.
Officers ran a search on his name and discovered he was wanted for the attack in Dolan’s apartment.
A statement from the woman who survived the attack was read by a prosecutor during a court hearing Thursday. The woman, a musician who was in her late 20s at the time of the attack, said she used concealer on her wounds and played a show the following day.
But as time went on she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and found herself “shattered” as her life began to unravel.
She said she’s gone through therapy and is healing and expressed hope Chavez could too.
“I sincerely hope that you are able to heal wherever you are hurt,” she said in the letter.