EAGLE, Colo. (KDVR) — A man was sentenced to a decade in prison in two cases of sexual assault against women he met on a dating app, who believe he drugged them before forcing violent sex.
Joshua Aaron Gewirtz, 28, pleaded guilty to the assaults that happened in November and December of 2020 in Avon and Red Cliff, according to the 5th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. He stands convicted of a count of second-degree felony assault causing serious bodily injury and a count of felony sexual assault overcoming a victim’s will.
He was sentenced on Wednesday.
Man has history of luring women
Both victims think the man drugged them unknowingly after they met on a dating app and went out for drinks at a bar.
“After consuming several drinks, he went to his place or theirs where he became aggressive towards the victims in a sexual manner,” the district attorney’s office said. “Despite their non-consent, Gewirtz hit, choked and degraded both victims, ultimately forcing sex upon them. Both victims related that they became intoxicated in an unusual way, and more so than they anticipated they believed they should be based on the quantity of alcohol they had consumed.”
Prosecutors said the man, from Lexington, Kentucky, was “an admitted user of illicit drugs” and a search of his home found LSD and liquid Xanax.
“Videos played at the sentencing hearing showed Gewirtz taking what the prosecution contended was LSD during the time of the second attack, as well as two videos of himself after the attacks, in which he was smoking marijuana and appeared to be boasting about the sexual assault,” the district attorney’s office said.
Another sentencing ahead in Larimer County
Gewirtz was arrested in these cases on Aug. 4, 2021, in Fort Collins.
The district attorney’s office called him a “sexual predator” who had a pattern of aggressive sexual contact with women he lured. He faces a separate sentencing in November in a similar case in Larimer County, the district attorney’s office said.
His sentence requires lifetime sex offender intensive supervised probation.