Michigan man sentenced to prison for raping girl 20 years ago
Shawn Robinson Hopkins (Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office)
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (FOX 2) - Twenty years after he sexually assaulted a teen girl, a Michigan man is headed to prison for the next 12 to 50 years.
Shawn Darnell Robinson Hopkins, 39, of Kalamazoo, learned his sentence last week after a jury convicted him of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The backstory:
According to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, Hopkins gave the then-14-year-old victim alcohol and marijuana before raping her in 2005. The victim reported the crime after it happened, but she did not know Hopkins' name, and he wasn't identified for more than a decade.
In 2022, the Kalamazoo Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) used DNA to link Hopkins to the assault, and he was arrested. He was found guilty last fall.
Hopkins has multiple aliases, authorities said, and a record of domestic violence with families and partners that dates back to the early 2000s.
"After so many years following this tragic assault, I hope this sentence will bring a sense of justice to the victim," Nessel said. "Her courage to come forward and seek accountability for her abuser is truly commendable. I am, as always, thankful for the Kalamazoo SAKI unit in pursuing justice for her and many other survivors of cold-case sexual assaults."
What they're saying:
During Hopkins' sentencing, the victim spoke about how the assault impacted both her childhood and her adult life.
"My childhood was stolen from me, which altered my adult life. I sometimes wonder how my life could have been had I not had such a traumatic thing happen to me. I want nothing more than to go back in time and have a healthy childhood like everyone deserves but that’s not what I was dealt in life," she said.
She went on to describe how she has nightmares and will never get over what happened to her.
"I’m now 33 years old and the images of what happened to me as a child will never go away. I’ve been to therapy and though it’s a coping mechanism, it’s not ever going to stop me from remembering the things this man has done to me when I was only a child," she said.
The Source: This information is from Attorney General Dana Nessel and previous FOX 2 reports.