WASHINGTON –Christopher Grooms, 36, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to a 12-year prison term for a home invasion sexual assault in Southeast Washington that occurred in 2006, announced U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves and Robert J. Contee III, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).
Grooms pleaded guilty in December 2021, in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, to attempted first-degree sexual abuse while armed, with aggravating circumstances. He was sentenced by the Honorable Marisa Demeo. The sentence of incarceration will be followed by 10 years of supervised release. Grooms is also required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his lifetime.
According to the government’s evidence, on March 25, 2006, at approximately 2:30 a.m., Grooms knocked on the door of an acquaintance in the 1300 block of Morris Road SE. The victim, who was seven months pregnant at the time, was staying over at the apartment while babysitting for a friend. The victim recognized Grooms and answered the door. Grooms pushed his way inside, grabbed her by the hair and brandished a gun. He forced the victim into a back bedroom where a four-year-old child was sleeping on a bunk bed. He pushed the victim onto the lower bunk. Grooms raped the victim while brandishing the gun and threatening to kill her.
When the sexual assault was over, Grooms stole a cell phone and left. The victim made a prompt report to police and obtained medical care to ensure the health of the baby as well as her own health. She also received a sexual assault examination the same day. The rape kit was tested in 2007 and yielded a DNA mixture that included the victim and a male contributor. In 2020, advances in DNA technology led to a match between the male DNA profile from the rape kit and the DNA profile of the defendant. A confirmatory DNA sample was later obtained from the defendant and resulted in a very strong statistic of inclusion of the defendant in the DNA mixture.
Grooms was indicted for first-degree sexual abuse while armed, with aggravating circumstances in September 2021, and has been held in custody since.
In 2012, Grooms was convicted of attempted first-degree sexual abuse for a sexual assault that occurred in 2008 involving a different victim.
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Graves and Chief Contee commended the work of those who investigated the case from the Metropolitan Police Department, including the Seventh Police District, the Sexual Assault Unit and the Cold Case Unit of the Sexual Assault Unit. They also expressed appreciation for the assistance provided by the U.S. Marshals Service. They acknowledged the efforts of those who worked on the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Paralegal Specialists Tiffany Fogle and Cynthia Muhammad, Victim/Witness Advocate Tracey Hawkins, and Supervisory Victim/Witness Services Coordinator Katina Adams-Washington.
Finally, they commended the work of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rachel Bohlen and Amy Zubrensky, who investigated and prosecuted the case.