Crime
The 52-year-old woman raped her 12-year-old victim in 2015 while acting as their foster parent, according to prosecutors.
A Charlton woman was sentenced to a decade in prison Tuesday for raping a 12-year-old child, prosecutors announced.
Heather Wright-Craft, 52, was found guilty Sept. 12 of one count of rape of a child, aggravated by age difference, and one count of rape of a child, aggravated by being a mandated reporter, according to the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office. Wright-Craft was found not guilty of a count of aggravated assault and battery on a child under 14.
Wright-Craft was sentenced in Worcester Superior Court to two concurrent prison terms of 10 years to 10 years and 1 day for the two rape charges, court records show.
The rapes occurred in Charlton in 2015 while Wright-Craft was a foster parent for the victim, according to prosecutors. She was arrested and charged in Dudley District Court in August 2017 and indicted in Worcester Superior Court the following March.
Prosecutors recommended the sentence based on the victim’s vulnerability as a young foster child and the fact that Wright-Craft abused the foster care system to rape the victim, according to a sentencing memorandum. The facts found by the jury also called for “an upward deviation from the sentencing guidelines,” prosecutors wrote.
“The Defendant raped the twelve-year-old victim and then at trial, years removed from the incident and seemingly for the first time, claims that the victim raped her,” prosecutors said in the sentencing memorandum. “Instead, she herself was struggling from addiction and her family and friends sought to get her help.”
The sentencing memorandum further states that Wright-Craft initially tried to “sweep the issue under the rug” and later called her family and friends “liars” at trial.
“Assistant District Attorney Thomas Ayres and Victim Witness Advocate Rachel Murphy did an excellent job on this case,” Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr. said in a press release. “I also want to recognize the great investigative work conducted by the Charlton Police Department on the case.”
Wright-Craft’s attorney, Isaac J. Mass, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.
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