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Hanscom sentenced for felony sex assault

By Dean Shalhoup - Senior Staff Writer | Oct 16, 2018

Staff photo by Dean Shalhoup A court officer leads Christopher Hanscom into Superior Court Monday for sentencing on sexual assault charges of which he was convicted in May. The judge sentenced him to the maximum 10-20 years in State Prison.

NASHUA – Moments before handing down a State Prison term of 10 to 20 years to former Hudson resident Christopher Hanscom, who was convicted in May of aggravated felonious sexual assault, Judge Charles Temple took a moment to study the faces of spectators seated on either side of the courtroom.

“As a judge, there is never a good feeling when I look around the courtroom and see this horrendous pain that’s been thrown on all of you by this type of conduct,” Temple said, looking back and forth at the two groups of about 10 people each.

One group, seated behind the defense table, came in support of Hanscom, including his mother and wife of about two years. The other included the woman Hanscom was convicted of sexually assaulting in early 2017.

Most all of them shed tears as Temple addressed the victim, then Hanscom’s family, then Hanscom himself.

The emotional scene followed nearly an hour of remarks by the prosecutor, Assistant County Attorney Cassie Devine, and Hanscom’s attorney James Gleason.

While Devine asked Temple to send Hanscom to prison for 20 to 40 years, with none of the term suspended, Gleason, citing his client’s remorse, his efforts to recover from drug abuse, his willingness to counsel others with drug programs and his long-held desire “to be a better person,” recommended a term of only two to six years.

Hanscom is “an ideal candidate for rehabilitation,” Gleason told Temple, and although he does have a lengthy criminal record dotted with serious offenses and convictions, none of the allegations involved the mistreatment of women, Gleason added.

In instituting the 10 to 20-year term, Temple told Hanscom that if he enrolled in, and successfully completed, a sex-offender treatment program in prison, the court would suspend two years of the minimum sentence.

“I don’t want you to be warehoused in prison,” Temple told Hanscom. “I want you to invest yourself in programming.

“Today is a dark day for you. I say, run to the light. Run to the hope in your life,” Temple said.

As for the misdemeanor simple assault charge on which Hanscom was also convicted, he was sentenced to a year in jail, all suspended for five years after his release from prison.

He was granted 162 days credit for time already served. He also must have no contact in any fashion with the victim.

The victim, 26, addressed the court, describing the difficulties she’s experienced since the assault, and how what she went through is “now part of my physical, my spiritual, being.”

She “shut down,” she said, at first intent on keeping the assault secret because “nobody can ever know … no one would ever understand.”

She began spending more time in bars than in church, the latter being the place that had previously always been most important to her.

Because it was through a church she met Hanscom, she said she “drifted from the church community … because it was no longer a safe place for me.”

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-1256, or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.

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