‘Monster’ gets 48 years for assaulting boy, mother

CRIME & THE COURTS

WARREN — Even Michael Peach admitted to being a “monster” for the sexual assaults he committed against a boy and physical assaults against the boy’s family last year.

On Thursday, Peach, 41, of Niles, got 48 years in prison — long enough, prosecutors hope, that he won’t be able to victimize anyone again.

Peach pleaded guilty in April to 18 felony charges, including gross sexual imposition against the boy, 9.

But Peach also pleaded guilty to charges related to an apparent attempt to kill the boy and his family to cover up his crimes, prosecutors said.

Gabe Wildman, assistant prosecutor, told Judge Ronald Rice of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court that Peach had been convicted of sex crimes against boys before.

Early on Dec. 9, 2016, Peach went to the boy’s home wearing a ski mask and carrying a hunting knife, stun gun and a backpack containing duct tape and rope, Wildman said in court documents.

He found the boy’s mother in the house and used the stun gun on her while demanding that she tell him where to find the boy, who was hiding in the home. She was holding her toddler at the time.

The boy’s father, alerted by telephone, was able to come to the house and disarm Peach.

Peach led police on a highspeed chase that ended with him trying to kill himself by cutting his own throat, the document says.

In a victim-impact statement, the boy’s mother said Peach was her supervisor at work, but she did not know he was a convicted sex offender. Peach was convicted of gross sexual imposition in 1996 and 1997.

“What I didn’t know was I was being groomed and set up to practically hand-deliver my son to a predator,” she said.

“I can’t imagine how scared my son was, hiding and listening to his mom and baby brother screaming as we were being attacked,” she said.

Peach said in documents found by police that he is a “monster” for what he did.