WBAL NBC-11 Baltimore:  “A Baltimore County police officer was sentenced Friday to home detention in the 2019 rape of a 22-year-old woman, prosecutors announced Monday. Anthony Westerman, 27, was convicted in August of two counts of second-degree rape, third- and fourth-degree sexual offense and second-degree assault of a 22-year-old woman in October 2017. In addition, Westerman was convicted of second-degree assault of another woman in June 2019.

“Prosecutors said Westerman was off duty at the time of the rapes and assaults. He has been held on home detention until his sentencing. A judge found Westerman guilty of rape and assault four years after Westerman offered to get a 22-year-old woman an Uber from a bar in White Marsh, but instead took her to his house and raped her, prosecutors said. The woman came forward in 2019 after Westerman was accused of assaulting and raping other women that same year. Those cases and the 2017 rape were tried at the same time.

“At sentencing on Friday, Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Keith Truffer determined that he had only intended to convict Westerman of one of the counts of second-degree rape and merged the sentences for all of the other counts into his sentence for the rape, prosecutors said. The judge then sentenced Westerman to 15 years of incarceration but suspended all but for four years of home detention. Westerman will then be on probation after his home detention. ‘Which means this defendant, who has been convicted of second-degree rape, will be serving the sentence in the privacy of their own home and that was certainly not something we were expecting or looking for,’ Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said. The judge then permitted Westerman to remain released to private home detention pending his appeal of the convictions.”