The woman told the police that the last thing she remembered was Perrot offering her drugs and that she did not consent to any sexual activity with him, Kimball said. She said officers and a witness had seen the two "positioned such that he was performing oral sex on her."
Perrot has been held without bail since he was arraigned at a lower district court on January 7, and the case was moved to Superior Court because of the seriousness of the charges.
He was indicted by a grand jury on March 25 on charges of rape, open and gross lewdness, assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest, the prosecutor's office said. He was arraigned Monday in Salem Superior Court.
Thomas J. Torrisi, a lawyer for Perrot, said Monday that his client had pleaded not guilty to all charges. He said Perrot and the woman were "two sad souls who both have addiction problems and were in need of help."
Torrisi said the woman purchased and used heroin while Perrot drank approximately 2 pints of cinnamon-flavoured whiskey and then passed out. He said his client had "absolutely not a single memory of this event at all."
Reflecting on Perrot's two separate rape cases, his lawyer said "one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. There are no factual similarities whatsoever."
Anthony Gulluni, the district attorney in Hampden County, where the 1985 rape took place, said in a statement that he did not share that view.
Gulluni said he still believed Perrot was guilty of that crime, which targeted an elderly woman in her home. Prosecutors at the time believed the assault was connected to a string of attacks in the Springfield area.
"We have and do continue to maintain the position that George Perrot committed several heinous offenses on elderly female victims," Gulluni said on Facebook. "Regrettably, there is another victim who has now allegedly suffered at his hands, three decades later."
In 1992, Perrot was convicted of a November 30, 1985, rape and burglary, according to The Innocence Project, a program from the Cardozo School of Law that works on the cases of people who have been wrongly accused. Perrot was 17 years old at the time of the assault.
The conviction was vacated by the Superior Court in September 2015 after his legal team demonstrated flaws in hair analysis testimony provided by an FBI analyst, according to a 2017 statement from the project, which worked on Perrot's case.
The group said Perrot's case was significant because the hair evidence used in his trial was either lost or destroyed afterward, which meant a DNA test, which is often done when seeking a new trial, was not an option. The victim had also maintained that she did not think Perrot was the man who attacked her, the project said.
Perrot was released from prison in February 2016, and the state officially dismissed the indictment against him in October 2017.
But Torrisi said his client's life as a free man had been a difficult one, shaped by the "torturous events" that happen when "a 17-year-old kid does 30 years in the toughest prison in Massachusetts."
"The system really failed him not only during that 30-year period, but after he was released as well. There was not a lot for him, no counselling, and he was sent out on his own," he said. "And he ended up on a bad path in terms of substance abuse, which is what led to this particular issue."
Written by: Liam Stack
© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES
