NASHUA – Former Nashua resident Christopher Bishop, who is serving 30-60 years in prison for raping a woman repeatedly while holding her captive in 1997, told a Superior Court judge Monday that he has made significant progress in dealing with his “sex addiction” and feels he is a good candidate for early release.

“I feel that over 20 years, I’ve overcome my issues,” Bishop, now 53, told Judge Charles Temple at his sentence-reduction hearing, which was held via video conference in Hillsborough County Superior Court South from the State Prison in Concord.

“I’ve already learned quite a bit, but I still need to address … to deal with my sex addiction,” he added.

But Temple, after hearing from Assistant County Attorney Kathleen Brown, who prosecuted Bishop in 1998 as Assistant County Attorney Kathleen Duggan, promptly denied Bishop’s motion.

“The sentence imposed on June 25, 1998, is fair, just and appropriate, based on the heinous nature of the offenses,” Temple told Bishop.

“The motion is denied.”

Brown had urged that outcome, telling Temple that “none of his sentence should be suspended, noting that Bishop had also been convicted in Massachusetts of a so-called “stranger attack” around the same time.

Bishop’s motion was based on a fairly new state statute that allows defendants, once they’ve served at least two-thirds of their original minimum sentence, to file a motion asking the court to suspend the remaining one-third of their sentence.

Bishop was 33 and a resident of 1 Grove St., Apt. 5, when he invited a 20-year-old woman he’d met through church to his apartment the evening of Sept. 12, 1997, to “discuss their friendship.”

That discusssiion, according to court records and Telegraph archives, deterioriated about two hours later into a physical confrontation after Bishop, who asked the woman for a hug, wouldn’t let her go.

He wrestled her to the floor, twisted her arm and pinned her down, and as she struggled, Bishop grabbed her throat, compromising her ability to breathe, according to testimony at the time.

Warning that he’d hurt her worse if she struggled, Bishop tied the woman’s wrists together. Over the next several hours, into the wee hours of the following morning, he repeatedly raped her.

The woman asked him to stop numerous times, the documents state, and at one point tried to talk to him about God in hopes she could persuade him to stop.

He finally relented and freed the woman, who drove to her parents’ home. They found her sobbing and pounding on the floor, and called police, the records state.

Bishop later admitted to police that he raped the woman: “He wanted to show her he loved her, and also show her how good he was,” police wrote in their

reports.

Although charged with some 23 criminal offenses, Bishop told police he was willing to plead guilty to the charges “because I am guilty, and I’m remorseful about the situation.”

On Monday, more than two decades later, Bishop raised some of the very same points, essentially blaming the series of assaults and rapes on the fact that he had “fallen in love with a girl (who) liked me, but wasn’t in love with me, and I didn’t know how to deal with those feelings.”

Bishop, speaking in both the past and present tense, told Temple “I do have love for this girl … that’s why I pleaded out (in 1998) and didn’t object to any of the state’s charges.

“I didn’t want to put her through what a trial would have put her through,” he said.

Now, Bishop said, “I see her as a friend … I only want the best for her. And I want the best for me as well.”

In a reference to the way he tried over several hours in September 1997 to profess his love for the woman, Bishop told the court that he “tried to have her see it my way, but it was the wrong way.”

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

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