A former school guidance counselor was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually assaulting women he met on the dating app Tinder.
Colin Black, 35, of Rockville, Maryland, pleaded guilty to attacking one woman. A jury convicted him of sexually assaulting another.
Crying and trembling, the two victims told the judge they've suffered mental and emotional anguish.
“There hasn’t been a day since my assault that I haven’t thought about what he has done to me,” one victim said.
The other said she has thought about suicide.
“No matter what you think, consent matters,” she said. “No matter what you believe, consent always matters, and to go on sexually assaulting people is not right, and the justice system saw to that today, and we are both so thankful.”
“I do want to take responsibility for my actions and want to express my sincere remorse,” Black said.
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His 78-year-old mother, who is blind and deaf, said she needs her son at home because he is her eyes and ears.
“First of all the family is crushed,” Black’s attorney, Barry Helfand, said. “The mother pled for her son, and we just spent time upstairs trying to answer questions such as, can we get him to serve his sentence close enough to where she can come visit? We had to explain, there’s no jail where she’s going to be able to visit.”
Black had worked as a guidance counselor and sports coach at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington.
