Hammer assault gets man state prison sentence
July 2, 2007
Adapted from the Pottstown Mercury
A man who prosecutors say “brutalized” a woman with a hammer during a sexual attack has been sentenced to state prison.
The 36-year-old man was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in a state correctional facility after he was convicted by a jury of charges of aggravated assault, rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, possession of an instrument of crime, terroristic threats, unlawful restraint, and recklessly endangering another person.
“For four hours this woman was brutalized and choked and sexually assaulted,” said an assistant district attorney. "The woman was terrified. She thought for sure she was going to die.”
During the two-day trial, prosecutors said the man, who knew the woman, assaulted her at her home after the two argued. He slapped, punched, choked, and handcuffed the woman before sodomizing her with a hammer, according to the criminal complaint filed by police.
“She said that during the entire incident she was crying, telling him to stop and he would tell her to shut up,” a sergeant wrote in the arrest affidavit. “(The woman) said that she was scared, she was afraid and in fact, during the assault, (he) said that he would kill her.”
The woman eventually was able to escape and fled from her residence to a neighbor’s home, where she called police.
The woman suffered a perforated eardrum when he punched her ear, prosecutors said. The woman became visibly shaken when she described the attack for the jury and when she had to identify the hammer that was used in the assault.
During the trial, the defense lawyer implied that any sexual activity was consensual and that the woman concocted the assault as a way to get revenge upon the man for things that occurred in their relationship.
The defense lawyer also questioned why the woman visited the man 14 times after he was arrested for the assault. He implied a woman who had been assaulted would not have visited her attacker.
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