PARIS — A New Hampshire man has been sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a 15-month-old and strangling the infant’s mother. 

, 21, of Conway, N.H., was expressionless as Oxford County Active-Retired Justice Robert Clifford handed down the sentence Friday afternoon, which was a year less than a prosecutor’s request. 

Defense attorney Gregory Braun asked for leniency from a lengthy jail sentence on grounds that Arnold had no prior criminal history and suffered from cognitive disabilities that would only worsen through incarceration.

Braun, who asked for a one-year jail sentence, said that although Arnold, who acknowledged his guilt in court documents and has been cooperative, had a prior, juvenile record, his client has a history of inpatient care requiring treatment otherwise inaccessible in a jail setting.

However Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Winter stressed that the assaults on the child and mother were serious and required the court’s condemnation. 

She said Arnold choked a Fryeburg woman with whom he had a relationship and assaulted her 15-month-child whom he had begun caring for in August 2014.

Court documents showed that the marks on the woman’s neck were visible to doctors several days after the assault when she took the child to the hospital. According to evidence submitted to the court, the child suffered from a broken arm, swollen lip, bruising all over the body, a black eye and a bite to the cheek. 

Arnold threatened to kill the woman if she left him, Winter said. 

“The gravity of the offenses — two distinct assaults — demand a significant sentence,” Winter told the judge. 

Arnold was indicted by a grand jury in December 2014 on charges of aggravated assault, assault on a child, domestic violence assault and endangering the welfare of a child. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped all but the two most serious assault charges.

Arnold also has an underlying sentence of eight years and will serve three years of probation after his release. The charges carried the possibility of more than 20 years in prison. 

The woman, who is not being identified by the Sun Journal, said her child does not remember the assault but suffers from nightmares. As for herself, she’s too scared to walk into the room where the assault occurred and is undergoing therapy. 

“What he did was horrible and I don’t want to see it happen to anybody else,” she told the judge. 

Dr. Luke Douglass, a forensic psychologist, told Clifford that Arnold had been abused as a child and expelled from school as a juvenile for a fight. 

Douglass said he diagnosed Arnold with a nonverbal learning disorder that inhibited his communication skills, leaving him feeling confused, stressed and volatile.

He said Arnold posed a moderate- to high-risk of violent behavior if let go, and advocated for a structured release. Incarceration, he said, would be less effective at addressing the underlying mental disorder than supervised counselling. 

John Arnold Jr., the defendant’s father, called for a balance of punishment and rehabilitation. 

“He said jail was what he needed to get his head straight,” Arnold Jr. said. 

Arnold himself addressed the court and apologized to the woman, saying he didn’t know how to live but had since come closer to God. 

“I need true help. Prison doesn’t help,” Arnold said. 

In explaining his sentencing, Clifford said, “The nature of the offenses are so serious in my mind that substantially more is required” than defense’s suggestion. 

ccrosby@sunmediagroup.net