Man Pleads Guilty to Assaulting Daughter's Sleepover Guests

Originally published by The Associated Press, November 19, 2002

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — A man was sentenced to 25 to 30 years in prison Tuesday for drugging and raping his young daughter's friends during sleepovers.

"I've never heard a set of facts as heinous as this," Superior Court Judge John S. McCann said a day earlier, after accepting Peter M. Gagnon's guilty plea.

Gagnon, 49, drugged six unsuspecting girls, ages 10 to 14, with alcohol and over-the-counter sleep medications when they stayed overnight, prosecutor Joseph J. Reilly III said. He then sexually molested the girls while they were "near comatose" or "in very deep sleep" and videotaped the sexual assaults, the prosecutor said.

Gagnon fled the day his 14-year-old daughter discovered the videotapes in her father's closet and gave them to police in May 2001, Reilly said. He was captured several weeks later on a beach about 20 miles south of Santa Barbara, Calif.

Gagnon's lawyer, John M. Goggins, said his client was "woefully sorry" for his crimes.