
A Saugus woman convicted of sexually assaulting an intoxicated 16-year-old girl in an attack that was videotaped and shared on Snapchat is asking to serve 1½ years in jail with credit for the approximately 10 months she’s spent locked up, according to court papers.
In the request, Kailyn Bonia’s lawyer says the 20-year-old woman comes from a broken home with a father who was incarcerated before dying in a motorcycle crash, a brother who has bipolar disorder, and another brother who died from a drug overdose months before her arrest.
The memo also says state child welfare officials removed Bonia from her home when she was in the fourth grade until she was about 13 years old.
Judge Kathe M. Tuttman is scheduled to sentence Bonia and her codefendant, Rashad Deihim, Friday in Essex Superior Court in Salem.
A jury convicted Bonia and Deihim, 21, in July of assault to rape, indecent assault and battery, and kidnapping in the attack carried out in the woods behind a Saugus elementary school.
Deihim was also convicted of posing a child in a state of nudity, while Bonia was acquitted of the same charge. Both are in custody awaiting sentencing.
At the time of the attack on Sept. 3, 2014, Bonia was suffering from a mental condition that “significantly reduced her culpability for the offense,’’ defense attorney James M. Caramanica wrote. He asked that Bonia’s history of mental illness and substance abuse be considered in crafting her punishment.
“On one hand, there is the need to punish and deter future conduct and address an offense that involved abuse of an extremely intoxicated person,’’ he wrote. “On the other hand, there is also the need to appropriately sentence a young woman with no prior convictions and an obvious drug problem and mental health problem that was a substantial cause to the events leading to her conviction.’’
As part of her sentencing request, Bonia seeks to serve a year and a half of a 2½-year jail term on the charges of indecent assault and battery and kidnapping followed by three years of probation for the assault to rape offenses. She also seeks credit for the time she spent in custody while the case was pending.
The prosecution has not disclosed its sentencing recommendation. The deadline for filing that request is Monday, according to the Essex district attorney’s office.
State law says the maximum penalty for indecent assault and battery is five years in prison. Those convicted of kidnapping face up to 10 years in prison and the stiffest punishment for assault to rape is 20 years behind bars.
A sentencing memo has been filed on behalf of Deihim, but court officials said on Friday that it could not be released because it had not been recorded. Deihim’s lawyer, Stephen Neyman did not respond Friday to requests for comment.
During the trial, the victim, who is now 18, testified but she recalled few details about the attack. When she was found by police, she was so incapacitated from alcohol and drugs she was “literally within hours of dying,’’ prosecutors said.
Deihim and Bonia had asserted that the encounter recorded on Snapchat was consensual and that they should be acquitted.
Key evidence about the assault came from another teenager, Sydnee Enos, who received the Snapchat videos and took screenshots of the recordings as they played on her phone.
Enos testified that she contacted Timothy Cyckowski, the teenager sending the videos, to learn where he was. Enos’s father then relayed the information to police, who found the victim half-naked in the woods.
Cyckowski, 19, was prosecuted in juvenile court, where he pleaded guilty to several charges. His father, Matthew, 39, pleaded guilty to destroying evidence and was sentenced to probation, court records show.
According to Caramanica, the attack occurred hours after Bonia was released from Lowell Treatment Center, where she had been treated for overdosing on drugs during a suicide attempt in August 2014.
The same night, Bonia drank and took the antiseizure drug Neurontin, which “significantly worsens the effects of alcohol consumption,’’ Caramanica wrote.
“Although these choices were clearly Ms. Bonia’s choices, they were made at a time that her mental health and thought process were certainly at issue,’’ he wrote.
Since her arrest, Bonia has completed her GED, attended North Shore Community College for a semester, and worked at a farm in Middleton, where she cared for horses and cleaned stables, her lawyer wrote. The filing includes photographs of Bonia riding horses and posing with equestrian ribbons.
“She is a young lady with the potential to finish her post-high school education and the desire to work in the mental health field,’’ Caramanica wrote. He declined to comment on the memo.
Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @lauracrimaldi.