Warren man gets life with no parole for many rapes of child relative

Staff report

WARREN

As expected, Rick Benchea learned Tuesday he will never again be a free man for raping his step-granddaughter in his Belevedere Avenue Southeast home multiple times per week for several years.

Benchea, 62, didn’t have anything to say to Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court before the judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility for parole on 12 counts of rape.

Four of the counts carried the life-without-parole sentence because of the age of the victim at the time of the offenses; eight others carried a sentence of life with parole eligibility after 25 years.

A jury also found him guilty of two counts of gross sexual imposition.

The offenses occurred between 2009, when the girl was 7, and last summer, when she was 11.

The girl spoke before the sentencing, thanking her mother, aunt, Assistant Prosecutor Gabe Wildman and Judge Logan for helping her “get through it.”

The girl testified that the abuse started out as touching over her clothes and generally occurred in the living room or Benchea’s bedroom in the small home where she lived with Benchea, her grandmother, her aunt, her brother and her cousin.

Benchea did not have a job, but his wife worked.

Jurors deliberated only an hour before returning guilty verdicts on all counts in early April.