By Elizabeth Mohr

St. Paul Pioneer Press

St. Paul — The judge called it “every woman’s worst nightmare,” then sentenced Jacob McKinley to 22 years in prison for raping a woman in her apartment.

“You broke into her house in the middle of the night … and assaulted her in the most violent way,” Ramsey County District Judge Jennifer Frisch told McKinley. “If you think in your mind it was somehow an invited act, that is unbelievable.”

She called his actions cowardly and unforgivable.

The victim, who spoke at sentencing, said the rape haunts her and has turned her from a trusting person to fearful and anxious.

“I’m just so sad all the time,” she said.

McKinley, 27, was charged in July with three felonies stemming from the June 16 incident: first-degree criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping and burglary.

A jury in October found him guilty on all counts.

According to a criminal complaint, the 24-year-old woman woke up around 4 a.m. June 16, noticed a shadowy figure near her bedroom door and became frightened when she realized it wasn’t her roommate. The man looked in her room and she pretended to be asleep, too afraid to call 911 because she feared he would hear her, she reported.

When the man seemed to move toward the front door, the woman told him to leave, the complaint said.