This news organization normally does not run the name or show the likeness of victims of sex crimes, but Sherman, 33, said she wanted her story known.
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“My name is Lindsay Sherman and Ted Mullins raped me,” she said during her victim impact statement. “I have lived the last nine years of my life haunted. Every man I passed on the street, I wondered. Was that the man who raped me?”
Sherman shared that despite what happened to her, she put herself through school and plans to become a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.
“I believe that my experience as a victim can be used to make this experience less horrible for others,” Sherman said, later adding, “I find myself constantly trying to mimic the person that I was before he raped me, but I can’t. He has murdered that person, and I will never be that person again.”
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Sherman described the process of being dumped out of the pickup and then being necessarily examined.
“It made me feel like my body didn’t belong to me anymore,” she said. “It was evidence. I was evidence, and I felt that way and was treated as such. I felt like a piece of garbage that had been used and cast aside that was being scavenged for clues.”
Montgomery County prosecutors advocated for a maximum of 44 years. Judge Dennis Langer did sentence Mullins, 47, to 11 years on each count, but ran the counts concurrently, not consecutively.
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Mullins earned 240 days of jail-time credit after being arrested in July 2017 when a test of a DNA kit connected him to the crimes.
“I think that’s what hurts,” assistant prosecutor Kelly Madzey said. “She sat for almost nine years not knowing who this person was or where he was, and he’ll serve — with his jail-time credit — just a little over that same amount of time.”
Even so, Madzey said Langer’s statement to Mullins — the judge called Mullins’ testimony ridiculous and absurd — helped.
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“(Langer) called this defendant out for who he was and what he did,” Madzey said. “He heard Lindsay, he heard her testimony … and he acknowledged what had happened to her and that she had lived with this for all these years not knowing who this person was until this DNA hit.”
Asked if he wanted to make a statement to the court, Mullins declined.
Defense attorney Carl Goraleski said they would appeal the conviction. Goraleski argued that all counts should merge — in that case Mullins’ exposure would have been 3 to 11 years.
Langer agreed with prosecutors on that point and told Mullins, “You did commit these brutal crimes.”
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But Langer’s harsh words for the defendant didn’t result in anything near the maximum possible sentence.
“We were hoping for more years, but (Sherman) is relieved,” Madzey said. “She is happy to know that it’s more than what she had not knowing who this person was or where he was. I think there’s a lot of relief and a lot of closure that comes in just knowing that.”
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