One of Francisco Alejandro Chale’s sexual assault victims stood before him in court Friday and listened as her sister read a statement on her behalf.
“I went out that night to spend time with my best friend,” she said. “He went out that night to hurt someone.”
Francisco Alejandro Chale (Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Chale, 29, of St. Paul, pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct in April for raping the woman in May 2022 in St. Paul after she got into his car thinking it was an Uber following a night of drinking at a downtown Minneapolis bar.
Chale also pleaded guilty to a June 2022 charge of second-degree criminal sexual conduct for assaulting a woman in his car in St. Paul in February 2017.
Ramsey County District Judge Joy Bartscher followed a plea agreement, which included imposing consecutive sentences for each offense, and gave Chale a total of 19½ years in prison. Charges of kidnapping to facilitate a felony and false imprisonment were dismissed, per the agreement.
Chale has an open third-degree criminal sexual conduct case in Hennepin County, with charges alleging he assaulted a vulnerable adult in his van in Richfield in May 2021. A jury trial is scheduled for July 8.
Thought it was an Uber
According to the criminal complaint in the 2022 attack, a resident in the 700 block of Slate Street on St. Paul’s West Side reported about 4 a.m. May 15 that a distraught woman had pounded on his door and said she was just raped by an unknown man.
Officers located the woman pacing and crying and wearing a dress that was partially ripped. She was transported to Regions Hospital, where she gave police a statement and underwent a sexual assault examination.
She reported getting into a car she thought was an Uber in Minneapolis and that she was taken against her will to St. Paul where the suspect, later identified as Chale, threatened to kill her and raped her. She said she was able to break away from the man and run to a nearby house.
She told police she and two friends, identified as AG and DJS, had gone to a bar and met up with other people. The woman said she had “lots” of drinks and at closing time she and AG decided to walk to DJS’s apartment, according to the charges.
The woman reported that she was going in and out of consciousness and that she lost AG as they were walking. She said she became more alert when she realized she was in the passenger seat of a car driven by an unknown man whom she believed to be of Hispanic descent.
When the vehicle stopped, the woman said she tried to open the car door because she sensed something was wrong. She said the man then “jumped” on top of her from the driver’s seat and raped her, the complaint read. She said she somehow fell out of the vehicle.
The woman’s sister told police that she received a text from her with the word “Help” at about 3:30 a.m.
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AG reported to police that said she was extremely intoxicated and trying to find an Uber or a ride. She said a car pulled up to her and the woman along Third Avenue South in downtown Minneapolis just after 3 a.m. and they got inside. AG said she told the driver that they were going to St. Paul. He later commented on their looks and touched both the women, she told police. AG said she got out of the car and the driver sped off with the other woman still in the car.
Video and audio from a church in the 600 block of Livingston Avenue in St. Paul indicated a struggle off camera and a male with a Latino accent telling someone to get back into the car. A short time later, the woman is seen running through the church parking lot and then falling to the ground, where she remained for several minutes.
DNA profiling taken during the sexual assault examination, and a known sample obtained from Chale in an unrelated criminal sexual conduct investigation, revealed a match, the complaint says.
Earlier victim met up with ‘Oscar’
The woman assaulted in 2017 told police the day of the attack that she had been introduced to the man by a friend. She reported that she only knew him as “Oscar” and that he had a Facebook profile name of “Oscar Hernandez.”
She told police that she agreed to meet up with him to talk and that they ended up in his car near her East Side apartment complex. Chale told the woman, “You should give me a Mexican baby” and tried to kiss her. She rebuffed his advances, and he locked the car doors and forcibly groped her, the charges say.
She told him to stop, and he tried ripping her pants off. He got her pants partially down and masturbated.
“Oscar’s” true identity was not known to St. Paul police until March 10, 2022, when they received a report from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension stating that swabs taken from the woman’s neck and breast during a sexual assault examination on the day of the assault matched Chale’s DNA, according to the charges.
Investigators located the woman to inform her of the results. She said that though she never saw her attacker again after the assault more than five years ago, she remembered his face and would be able to identify him. A police investigator administered a sequential photo lineup and she identified Chale “with 100 percent certainty.”
‘Did I deserve this?’
The woman in the 2022 attack said Friday that she will always wonder why he chose to rape her that night.
“Why did it have to be me? Did I look easy? Was my dress too short or was I too drunk? … Did I deserve this?” she told the court.
She said she is “feeling the weight of responsibility for standing up for others that went through this nightmare, too.”
She said she hopes she can “feel safe again … that one day I can enjoy the quiet of the night, and I hope the nightmares will stop.”
Before imposing Chale’s sentence, Bartscher asked him if there was anything he wanted to say. “No, ma’am,” he said.
Bartscher told the woman that she was courageous.
“And I say the same thing often to folks like you or people in your situation, but this is only one part of your life,” the judge said. “This should not define you, and I hope that you can make it to a point where you can get beyond this.”
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