RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A Mead Valley man who sexually assaulted mentally impaired women he picked up on the streets, and in some cases locked up in his house, was sentenced Friday to 965 years to life in prison.
Between 2001 and 2005, Peter Frances Milosavjevic, 57, brought at least nine women to his Rios Road duplex and kept some of them there as virtual sex slaves, according to trial testimony.
He cruised streets, bus stops and train depots in search of victims, who were offered shelter in exchange for housework and sexual favors. Most of the women, whose ages ranged from 30 to 59, were developmentally disabled and homeless, and some had worked as prostitutes.
Authorities used photographs the defendant had taken to identify his victims.
Milosavjevic, who lived in a duplex next to his mother, had a padlock on his sliding glass door, the only way in or out of his residence aside from the windows, and some of his victims said he locked the door when he left for the day, preventing them from leaving.
"I doubt I'll ever see a case as despicable as this one in the years to come," said Riverside Superior Court Judge Mac Fisher as he announced his sentence.
"You have demonstrated to the court that you need to go to prison to protect the community," he said. "You cannot resist hurting people seriously. This sentence is appropriate for the destruction you have caused the victims."
A Riverside woman testified that Milosavjevic tied her to his bed and violated her with a vibrator coated with a burning substance that caused intense pain.
Investigators said he also used drugs and alcohol to subdue some of his victims.
Another woman testified that Milosavjevic said he would kill her and her family if she left him.
She was raped, sodomized and forced to give oral sex during her six-month ordeal, said Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Chirco.
Some of the women were freed after Milosavjevic tired of them, while others found ways to escape, she said.
Milosavjevic testified the women were his lovers. He said he felt sorry for them and took them home to get them off the streets.
He said he padlocked his house to keep family members and acquaintances with drug addictions from breaking in, and that the ropes authorities found around his bed were to hold it up -- not restrain his victims.
His attorney, Chris Jensen, said in October that Milosavjevic operates on the "same mental plane as the mentally challenged women who testified against him."
Jensen said the victims' accusations made it difficult to mount a successful defense.
In October, a six-man, six-woman jury convicted Milosavjevic of 38 sexual assault-related charges, along with five sentence-enhancing allegations, including "tying and binding" victims for the purpose of assault.
Milosavjevic had previously convictions in 1983 and 1995 for brutalizing women, one of whom he raped and beat so severely she was in a coma for days.
