Kya Stoudt’s eye burned an unnatural blood-red, veins spiderwebbing through the white. Scratch marks trailed down her neck. Her right arm showed dark, purplish bruises that looked like fingerprints pressed too hard, for too long.
These were the marks Stoudt’s body bore after she told her boyfriend: “You’re not going to make me do something I don’t want to do.”
Brent Gage, a 31-year-old Concord resident, the man she was dating for around three months, strangled Stoudt in her house on Aug 23 after she refused to engage in a particular sexual act, according to a protective order issued last month.
Gage “physically strangled me from behind, causing me to lose my breath and fear for my life,” Stoudt wrote in her emergency protection from abuse petition she filed in Concord District Court. “I was unable to breathe or break free from his grip.”
The timing of the attack made it all the more alarming for Stoudt. She had just learned that Sandra Marisol Fuentes was killed by her estranged husband, Michael Gleason, in Berlin after a domestic violence incident. Gleason had been out on bail when he shot Fuentes and then took his own life on July 6.
Fuentes took out a restraining order that mandated that Gleason stay away from her. He was charged with multiple crimes, including domestic violence, but was allowed to remain free on bail.
While Stoudt’s own case is now moving through the courts, her sense of safety remains fragile. A judge denied the Concord Police’s request to hold Gage in preventive detention, so he remains free, out on bail, despite past convictions for assault and criminal threatening.
“A restraining order is a piece of paper; it’s not really protection,” Stoudt said. “They say New Hampshire takes strangulation very seriously. Why is he out on bail if it’s taken seriously?”
‘I don’t want to stay quiet’
Every year, more than 6,000 people report facing domestic violence, according to data from the New Hampshire Crime Statistics.
These numbers reflect only the victims who report instances of violence to law enforcement. Many others remain silent, held back by fear of retaliation or the worry that speaking out could make their situation even more dangerous.
In 2024, 6,342 domestic violence incidents were reported, with 57% of them at the hands of an intimate partner, such as a spouse, partner or ex-partner.
For Stoudt, those numbers became painfully real one Saturday night in August, after she and Gage spent the evening drinking at a Concord bar. When the night ended, they took a cab back to her house.
Everything seemed fine at first. But when Gage asked her to engage in a sexual act and Stoudt refused, what happened next left her shaken.
He put Stoudt in a “headlock and applied pressure to her neck,” according to a criminal complaint from Concord Police charging Gage with a Class B felony.
During the brief struggle, she gasped for air. “What are you going to do, you stupid b*tch?” he said, according to her petition for a protective order.
When Gage finally released her, she ran to the bathroom, locked the door and called 911. Moments later, Gage kicked the door open while she was still on the phone with the dispatcher, according to her petition for a protective order.
Once her case made it to court, Stoudt discovered Gage’s criminal history, and it pushed her to speak out in an effort to protect others.
“Seeing his record and his past, I don’t want to stay quiet because he’s continuously hurting people,” Stoudt said.
Court records reveal that Gage has had multiple encounters with the legal system. In 2015, he faced six counts of criminal threatening and two counts of criminal threatening with a deadly weapon. In 2019, he was charged again, this time for simple assault.
In the weeks leading up to the incident, Stoudt said she didn’t notice any major red flags. The only thing that stood out, she recalled, was that Gage didn’t like being told what to do — even when it came to simple requests, like asking him to put his phone away when it was getting late at night.
Steven Endres, a former assistant Merrimack County attorney and a member of the state’s judicial task force on domestic violence cases, said that domestic violence often escalates once the criminal justice system becomes involved, a pattern partly shaped by long-standing societal norms.
“I think there were times when controlling your spouse was an accepted norm,” Endres said. “We’re now realizing that that behavior is not appropriate.”
In New Hampshire, women continue to make up the majority of domestic violence victims, about 70% year after year.
The state has also recorded domestic violence–related homicides each year over the past decade, with 9 in 2022, 14 in 2023 and four in 2024, according to the state Department of Justice.
So far this year, New Hampshire has seen five domestic violence-related deaths: three in Madbury, one in Berlin and one in Pembroke.
Endres said he isn’t sure the system is making as much progress as it should in preventing domestic violence deaths.
“Unfortunately, I think a lot of what we’re seeing is history repeating itself in the sense that we have a tragedy where somebody gets murdered and we look at the laws, we try and fix laws, and then several years later, we find ourselves in the exact same situation,” he said.
To ensure Gage keeps his distance from Stoudt, Concord Circuit Court granted her a one-year protective order. The order requires Gage to surrender all firearms and other deadly weapons and prohibits him from coming within 300 feet of her.
In the order from Sept. 23, the judge found there was a credible threat to Stoudt’s safety, stating that Gage assaulted her after “she refused to perform a sexual act he demanded, indicating his willingness to use violence.”
Despite finding Gage to be a threat, the court refused to hold him in preventive detention.
The case has now moved to the Merrimack County Superior Court.
Last week, Stoudt said she spotted Gage at a bar and said she would feel safer if there were electronic monitoring in place until the case is resolved.
Even though she sometimes feels a little skittish when she’s out, Stoudt isn’t letting fear stop her from living her life.
“This experience has definitely made me stronger,” she said. “I’m tired of women not being protected and people not taking it as seriously as it should be taken.”
If you need help
- Call the 24/7 State Domestic Violence Hotline at 1866-644-3574
- Call the 24/7 Sexual Assault Hotline 1800-277-5570