Judge finds 'acts occurred' in sexual predator civil case, but decision remains sealed

Donald Levier enters the courtroom on the first day of his September bench trial. (Rochester Voice file photo)

DOVER - While the ruling in the case of a Somersworth man accused of being a sexual predator remains sealed, the Strafford County Attorney did tell The Rochester Voice on Friday that the presiding judge did determine that a sexual assault against a Somersworth woman did occur.
If Donald Ray Levier, 37, who is accused of two violent sex assaults in less than a month in 2021 is classified as a sexual predator, he could be sentenced to a secure psychiatric facility for a specific period of time.
Levier's September bench trial lasted three days, during which the victim in the case testified that in the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 2021, Levier, whom she knew only casually, showed up at her door.
Even though she had never been alone with him before, she let him in, however, and they sat down on an L-shaped couch she had in her living room where Levier talked about his recent trip to Hampton Beach where he'd been offered heroin by "some girls."
After a few minutes she testified that Levier began coming on to her, touching her thigh and groping her.
"I said, 'what are you doing?'" she told Strafford County Attorney Emily Conant Garod.
"What happened then?" Garod asked.
"He kept groping me and saying, 'Let me get that,'" she testified.
The victim said at that point she went to the door and opened it for him to leave, but he slammed it shut and began to strangle her as he pushed her down the hallway toward her bedroom where he flung her face down on her bed.
"He pursued me down the hallway while taking his clothes off, strangling me with one of his hands on my throat," the victim sobbed.
She said during the struggle she kept screaming "Help" and "no means no" and "get off me" while banging her hands on her trailer's walls to try to alert neighbors she was being attacked.
She testified that once on the bed, he pinned her down with her legs pressed up against her chest and began trying to pull her pants down.
"I was fighting him, I couldn't breathe cause he was on top of me, he kept on choking me," the victim testified.
She said the ordeal came to a quick end when voices at her door yelled, "Somersworth Police" and Levier released her and went into her bathroom as she ran to the door to let two officers in.
Until Friday, the victim, herself, didn't even know the judge had found "the acts occurred."
While the bench trial was open to the public, Judge Daniel E. Will's ruling on the whether Levier is classified as a sexual predator remains sealed.
Will ordered Garod and Levier's defense attorney to submit arguments on whether it should remain sealed by Nov. 10, but has still failed to release to the public the result of his deliberations.
Meanwhile, the second sexual assault Levier is accused of in Dover on Sept. 28, 2021, will go to a bench trial in January.
According to an affidavit written by Dover Det. Andrew Courter, Levier entered a 65-year-old woman's New York Street residence around 1:10 a.m.
The affidavit notes that the woman uses a CPAP breathing machine and had gone to bed between 10 and 11 p.m. only to awake to feel a hand moving down her back and onto her buttocks in the areas of her vagina and anus.
Startled, she sat up in bed and saw the person whom she described as a thin black male who smelled strongly of alcohol and cigarettes and had an erect penis, the affidavit states.
The man said "Let me get a piece" and "come on, Mommy," according to the affidavit.
The victim said she told him to get out and was ushering him to the front door when he turned and went into her granddaughter's room, tried to exit through a window but then slammed the window down waking up her granddaughter.
The man then went to the front door and finally left after which the victim called police, the affidavit states.
Looking back on what happened that night the elderly Dover woman told The Rochester Voice in October 2021 she still has a hard time talking about it, saying it was like a bizarre, unsettling and disturbing dream she had a hard time describing.
"I woke up to someone touching me inappropriately," she said quietly, adding during the attack his hand and fingers groped her private parts. "It was like I was dreaming, it was very, very strange, scary, I was disoriented, thinking there's someone in my house in my room and doing this ... I had no clue, it's hard to put into words, he had clothing on and I could see through the clothes his erect penis... I felt so violated."
She said she told him to "get out, but he went into my granddaughters room" which was the room he had entered through a window.
"He then slams the window shut he'd come in, and I screamed at him to get out. When I screamed it woke up my (oldest) granddaughter."
She said she finally got him to leave her granddaughter's room, ushered him to the back door and told him to leave.
"As he was leaving he asked, 'Can I have a cigarette' and I yelled, 'Get the hell out of here' and he finally left, she said. "Can you believe that?"
She thinks Levier is likely a serial offender who should be off the streets.
"The way he did it, I felt like I knew he'd done this before," she said.
When she learned that a judge had ordered Levier be released on no bail after the earlier attack at the Somersworth mobile home park and also after he violated his conditions of release, she became furious.
"I want somebody to pay, to be held accountable," she said angrily her voice rising. "Anybody that does violent crime, you don't let him out. Why would you let him out? I don't understand the thought process of letting a criminal out who has violent tendencies. I shake my head in disbelief."
The judge who ordered Levier twice released is Strafford Superior Court Judge Mark E. Howard.
Levier has either been in custody in Strafford County Jail or an unidentified secure psychiatric facility since the second alleged sexual assault occurred in Dover on Sept. 28, 2021, about three weeks after the Somersworth incident.
Levier was facing decades in jail on the two criminal sex assault arrests.
The civil case seeking to have Levier involuntarily committed was filed on May 30. All documents in the case remain sealed.
According to state statute, an individual to be considered for sexual predator status must have either been convicted in a court of law; "adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity of a sexually violent offense; or found incompetent to stand trial on a charge of a sexually violent offense and the court makes the finding required pursuant to RSA 135-E:5."
In the statute a sexually violent predator is defined as any person who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense; and "suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in acts of sexual violence if not confined in a secure facility for long-term control, care, and treatment."