‘HOPE HE ROTS’

Former Idaho Lawmaker Gets 20 Years for Raping Intern

Aaron von Ehlinger was convicted in April for the attack on the 19-year-old.

A former Idaho lawmaker on Wednesday was sentenced to 20 years for raping a 19-year-old legislative intern. Aaron von Ehlinger was convicted of felony rape in April, a year after he resigned from Idaho’s House of Representatives in the wake of an ethics committee’s recommendation that he be banned from the statehouse. At the sentencing hearing Wednesday, 4th District Judge Micahel Reardon remarked on Ehlinger’s lack of empathy and remorse after the fallen lawmaker protested his innocence and cited his service in Afghanistan as testament to his character. “You see yourself as a victim and you see yourself as a hero, and frankly I don’t see you as either one of those things,” Reardon told Ehlinger. “I am here now. I am here scared, I am here frightened, I am so petrified, but I will not be intimidated into silence so that another rapist can slip through the cracks of this justice system,” Ehlinger’s victim said in a recording played during the sentencing hearing. “I hope he rots in pieces behind those cold metal bars.”