Rapist granted parole hearing just months after conviction

For 33 years, Amy has lived with the trauma of a 1992 Valentine’s Day rape in Virginia, a cold case that finally cracked last year when DNA evidence linked the crime to a convicted rapist.

In September 2025, Anthony Favors, 57, who initially faced six indictments, including abduction and burglary, took a plea deal for two counts of rape to secure a 24-year prison sentence. Norfolk Judge Everett A. Martin Jr. ordered 12 years for each count to run consecutively.

Months later, Amy received an automated VINE text that Virginia’s parole board planned to review Favors’ case for possible release.

“I finally get some sort of closure and justice. And then I get a text,” Amy told Fox News Digital. “Nobody yet has told me how he’s even eligible for parole.”

Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi confirmed to Fox News Digital that Favors will likely have a “discretionary parole hearing” within the next few months.

Fatehi explained that a bureaucratic overlap triggered the hearing: the parole board previously considered Favors for release on a previous rape conviction but never granted it, legally opening the door for the upcoming review.

“It’s discretionary because he had been locked up for so long. He is theoretically eligible,” Fatehi said.

Separate rape case

Favors was serving a 60-year sentence for a separate March 1992 rape when a 2024 DNA hit linked him to Amy’s case. Since he committed his offenses before Jan. 1, 1995, Virginia’s old sentencing laws authorized the Virginia Parole Board to consider him for release.

Fatehi said that there is a “slim chance to zero” of actually releasing Favors, but the possibility of an impending hearing left Amy reeling.

“The only word I can think of right now, honestly, is disgusting,” she said. “It’s wrong. How can you do that? Where is my justice?”

The attack altered the course of Amy’s life. Favors beat and assaulted the active-duty Navy sailor for hours at her Norfolk apartment. Despite the trauma, she reported directly to her shift on a Navy ship immediately after the attack.

Decades later, the psychological scars have dictated her daily routine. She battles severe PTSD, chronic sleep deprivation, and hypervigilance that forces her to constantly check and recheck her door locks.

“Some of the things that I did that I thought were normal, were not normal. And I still do,” Amy said. “Check the locks, recheck the locks, check the locks, recheck the locks. I’m not sleeping again because… it’s the unknown.”

“If you took the Amy before my rape and the Amy after my rape, I am two different people.”

Heather Keeley, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Stand Tall, said survivors already carry the weight of their past assaults. By granting Favors a future parole hearing, she argued, the justice system actively expands that trauma by forcing victims to endlessly relive it.

“He was sentenced to 24 years in prison, which wouldn’t even put him up for parole 12 years later,” Keeley told Fox News Digital.

“And here it is less than six months later, and she’s calling us all that she just received a text message that he’s going before a parole board… how is that even possible?”

Reliving a nightmare

A new hearing means Amy will detail her nightmare to the parole board to justify her own safety, risking the progress she made during months of intensive trauma therapy.

She plans to ask the parole board for a three-year deferral so the state does not force her to relive the attack annually.

“I now have to explain myself again as to why he shouldn’t get out… It’s too much. But I gotta speak for me, and I gotta speak for these other victims who can’t speak for themselves. So, I gotta do it.”

Amy also fears the board’s actions will destroy the public’s trust in the system.

“If you’re paroling these people, what incentives does that give somebody else?” she asked. “If they’ve been raped or sexually assaulted, what gives them the incentive to go and report it?”

The Virginia Parole Board does not publicly list its full hearing schedule, but it posts monthly parole decisions on its official website.

Favors’ defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Fox News Digital reached out to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s office for comment.