A jury found a Boston man guilty on half of the charges against him last week in connection with a September 2024 attack on a homeless woman “that left her bruised, bloodied and screaming for help,” the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday.
Dorchester resident Anthony Dew, 43, was convicted on charges of assault and battery causing serious bodily injury, assault and battery and strangulation in Suffolk County Superior Court, the district attorney’s office said in a press release. The judge in the case declared a mistrial on the three other charges against him: rape, attempted murder and assault with intent to murder.
The charges stem from a Sept. 8, 2024, incident that prosecutors say began with Dew approaching a 51-year-old homeless woman and inviting her to take drugs with him, the district attorney’s office said. He is accused of bringing the woman to his mother’s home on Evelyn Street in Boston before raping, beating and strangling her.
Dew fled the scene following the attack, leaving the woman “bloodied, undressed and screaming for help in the driveway” of the home, the district attorney’s office wrote. At the scene, officers found her “with her jeans pulled down to her ankles and a T-shirt soaked in what appeared to officers to be blood.”
“As officers approached the victim, she screamed ‘he raped me’ and pointed to an apartment. The victim told police the man who attacked her lived there and had raped and beat her as she ‘went in and out’ of consciousness,” the district attorney’s office wrote.
The officers could see that the woman was spitting up blood, and that her face was covered in it, the district attorney’s office said. They also found her hair on a set of stairs leading out of the apartment.
The woman was left with bruises all over her body, and her mouth, jaw and both of her eyes had swelled, the district attorney’s office said. First responders took her from the scene to a local hospital.
A DNA sample was recovered from the victim’s underwear, the district attorney’s office said. A few weeks after the attack, the FBI’s crime scene DNA database linked Dew’s profile to the recovered DNA.
On Friday, the judge in the case sentenced Dew to seven-and-a-half to nine years in state prison on the three charges he has been convicted of thus far, the district attorney’s office said. Dew is set to return to court on Jan. 21, 2026, for a status hearing on the remaining charges.
“I’m grateful that this defendant has been held accountable for some of the serious charges in this vicious attack, and I wish the victim a full recovery from the physical and psychological trauma she suffered,” Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in the release. “We will address the remaining charges at the appropriate time, but for now we’re pleased with this initial measure of justice.”
Dew was previously convicted on five sex trafficking charges in 2016.
The district attorney’s office advises that victims of sexual or domestic violence call 911 in an emergency. They can also seek help by calling SafeLink — Massachusetts’ domestic violence hotline — at 877-785-2020.
