A Pittsfield man was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison yesterday for kidnapping and beating a woman he had dragged into his apartment and forced to undress.

Damian Maura, 27, had already pleaded guilty to forcing the woman, who lived down the hall from him, into his apartment and punching and choking her. Maura is already serving two consecutive 3½-to-7-year sentences for an earlier conviction of assault against another woman. Maura was out on bail on those charges when he attacked the second woman.

Appearing in Merrimack County Superior Court yesterday, Maura told Judge Kenneth Brown that he suffered from mental illness and needed counseling to turn his life around, not a longer prison term. Brown replied that Maura posed an "indiscriminate danger" to society and imposed the 7½-to-15-year sentence prosecutors recommended.

"You ask for a second chance," Brown told Maura. "But this is like a third chance."

According to a police affidavit, on Aug. 2, 2006, Maura grabbed a 21-year-old Pittsfield woman, who lived in the same building where he and his parents shared an apartment, while she was on her way to a doctor's appointment. Maura forced the woman into his bedroom, threw her on his bed and told her to take her clothes off as he held a razor blade. When she resisted, Maura told her that he wouldn't hesitate to "bloody my bed" if she refused. Maura also beat the woman, choking her and punching her in the face.

The woman managed to distract Maura by throwing her cell phone across the room. As Maura looked for the phone, the woman ran back to her apartment, naked, and called the police.

When police officers arrived at Maura's apartment, they found Maura naked on his bed watching a pornographic movie. The victim's clothes were found outside the apartment building, in a garbage bag that also contained pieces of Maura's mail, according to the police.

The attack resulted in several charges against Maura: attempted felonious sexual assault, simple assault, criminal threatening and kidnapping. The rape and criminal threatening charges were dropped in the course of negotiating Maura's guilty plea, according to the case file.

Deputy Merrimack County Attorney George Waldron, who prosecuted the case, said he dropped the attempted sexual assault charge "after consulting with the victim and determining that it was in the victim's best interest to go ahead with just the kidnapping and assault charges." Had he been convicted of attempted sexual assault, Maura would have faced a maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years.

In court yesterday, Waldron detailed Maura's long history of trespassing and assaulting women. He was convicted by a jury in 2007 of criminal restraint and second-degree assault for beating another Pittsfield woman. According to the indictment from the incident, Maura went to the home of a Pittsfield woman and told her he needed help finding his brother. When the woman tried to get Maura to leave her apartment, he choked her, dragged her across the ground and slammed her head into the ground. He's serving sentences between 7 and 14 years for that attack. Maura was also convicted twice of criminal trespassing in Pittsfield.

"This is a dangerous individual. His history demonstrates it," Waldron said. "We believe long-term incarceration is in the interest of public safety."

Richard Mooney, Maura's lawyer, asked for a shorter prison sentence of 3½ to 7 years. Moody said Maura suffered from mental illness, including bipolar disorder, and drug addiction, and that he needed treatment that was not available in prison.

"Keeping him warehoused for the period the state is suggesting would not benefit the state and would not benefit my client," Moody said.

Mooney said Maura knew the victim, since she and Maura's sister had gone to school together. Mooney claimed the woman was selling drugs to Maura and that she tried to take Maura's money without giving him the drugs. Maura told the woman to take her clothes off, Mooney said, because he wanted to make sure she wasn't hiding any drugs or money. (next page »)