For 33 years, Amy carried the trauma of being raped on Valentine’s Day in 1992. The Virginia cold case was finally solved last year when DNA evidence connected the attack to a convicted rapist.
Anthony Favors, now 57, initially faced six indictments, including charges of abduction and burglary. In September 2025, he accepted a plea deal covering two rape counts and received a 24-year prison sentence. Norfolk Judge Everett A. Martin Jr. ordered the 12-year sentences to be served consecutively.
Several months later, Amy received an automated VINE notification saying Virginia’s parole board planned to review Favors’ case and consider whether he could be released.
“I finally get some sort of closure and justice. And then I get a text,” Amy told News Outlet. “Nobody yet has told me how he’s even eligible for parole.”
Amy was sexually assaulted by Anthony Favors while serving in the Navy. (Courtesy of Amy)
Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi confirmed to News Outlet that Favors will likely face a “discretionary parole hearing” within the next few months.
Fatehi said the review stems from a procedural overlap. The parole board had previously considered Favors for release in connection with an earlier rape conviction but denied parole, a decision that legally allows the board to take up the case again.
“It’s discretionary because he had been locked up for so long. He is theoretically eligible,” Fatehi said.
A separate rape conviction
Favors was serving a 60-year sentence for a separate rape committed in March 1992 when a DNA match in 2024 connected him to Amy’s case. Because both offenses occurred before Jan. 1, 1995, Virginia’s former sentencing laws permit the state Parole Board to consider him for release.
Anthony Favors received a 24-year prison sentence for raping a woman in 1992. (Virginia State Police)
Fatehi said the chance that Favors will actually be released is “slim chance to zero.” Even so, news of the potential hearing left Amy shaken.
“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 assault changed the trajectory of Amy’s life. Favors beat and raped the active-duty Navy sailor for hours inside her Norfolk apartment. Despite what had happened, she reported for duty aboard a Navy ship immediately afterward.
More than three decades later, the psychological effects still shape her daily life. She struggles with severe PTSD, chronic sleep deprivation and hypervigilance, including repeatedly checking the locks on her doors.
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Amy was raped in Virginia while serving in the Navy. (Courtesy of Amy)
“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 organization Stand Tall, said survivors already live with the lasting impact of sexual violence. A future parole hearing for Favors, she argued, adds to that burden by requiring victims to repeatedly revisit the trauma.
“He was sentenced to 24 years in prison, which wouldn’t even put him up for parole 12 years later,” Keeley told News Outlet.
“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?”
Forced to revisit the trauma
The new review means Amy may have to recount the attack to the parole board to argue that Favors remains a threat, potentially jeopardizing the progress she made through months of intensive trauma therapy.
She intends to ask the board for a three-year deferral, which would prevent the state from requiring her to revisit the case every year.
Amy with her father. (Courtesy of Amy)
“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 is also worried that the board’s actions could erode public confidence in the justice 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 publish its complete hearing calendar, though it posts monthly parole decisions on its official website.
Favors’ defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. News Outlet also contacted Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s office for comment.
