Bench trial for man facing sexual predator finding begins in Dover

Donald Levier enters Courtroom 1 at Strafford Superior Court for the opening of his bench trial to determine if he is a sexual predator. (Rochester Voice photos)

DOVER - A Dover man accused in two violent sex assaults in less than a month in 2021 is in the midst of a three-day bench trial to decide whether he should be labeled a sexual predator.
Since it is a bench trial, Strafford Superior Court Judge Daniel E. Will will determine if Donald Ray Levier, 37, should be labeled a sexual predator, which would allow him to be sentenced to a secure psychiatric facility for a specific period of time.
Levier, who appeared in court on Monday handcuffed and in jail garb, is accused of a violent sex assault on a 41-year-old Somersworth woman during the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 2021.
The victim, who is not being identified by The Rochester Voice, said she and Levier both lived at a Somersworth Mobile Home Park, where she occasionally hung out with Levier's uncle.

Donald Levier, left, stares at the ceiling during testimony from his alleged victim during the first day of his civil trail on whether he should be labeled a sexual predator.

She testified that in the early morning hours of Sept. 5 Levier showed up at her door and when she opened it, she expected to see both he and his uncle as she and Levier had never hung out before.
She let him in, however, and they sat down on an L-shaped couch she had in her living room where Levier talked with her about a 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 Deputy 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 of her mobile home to 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 hands on my throat," she sobbed.
She said during the struggle she kept screaming "Help" and "no means no" and "get off me" while banging her hands on the trailer's walls to try to alert neighbors she was in peril.
She testified that once on the bed, he pinned her on her back 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.
She said she suffered a fractured nose and cuts on her throat during the assault.
Defense attorney Katherine Rose Canny opened her questioning by asking the victim if she was aware some people at the mobile home park questioned her reputation, and was she aware of the talk.
The victim said she was aware of it, "but I'm not that type of girl."
Canny also questioned how Levier was able to violently pursue her down the hallway while taking off his clothes and whether his clothes were found in the hallway or the bedroom.
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 had a pair of final pretrial hearings scheduled in July ahead of an expected jury trial, but those cases remain in abeyance as sexual predator status is now in play.
Strafford County Jail personnel told The Rochester Voice that Levier was transferred to a mental health facility on July 9.
That mental health facility is likely the Secure Psychiatric Unit of the New Hampshire Department of Corrections.
As the civil trial approached her was transferred back to Strafford County Jail.

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.
The Somersworth arrest occurred on Sept. 5, 2021, after officers responding to calls for help found Levier had gained access to a mobile home belonging to a female and attempted to sexually assault the victim by throwing her on a bed and trying to remove her pants and underwear.
The Somersworth incident report also alleges he slapped and strangled her and held her down.
When Police arrived they found Levier with no clothes on in the woman's bathroom where he was arrested. He was charged with sex assault, simple assault, criminal restraint and second degree assault.
Former Somersworth Police Chief David Kretschmar told The Rochester Voice at the time it was '"a random attack."
Prior to Levier's arraignment on Sept. 7, 2021, Blair Rowlett of Strafford County Community Corrections filed her own assessment concerning Levier's suitability for supervision by SCCC, which evaluates whether suspects charged with crimes can be allowed to remain free - with specific and individualized conditions - while awaiting trial or plea deals.
Her assessment found Levier "Not Acceptable."
"The Defendant has a lengthy and violent criminal record from Louisiana which includes Failures to Appear and Parole violations," she wrote. "There is a 2019 charge in NCIC that does not have a disposition and appears to still be open ... SCCC has concerns with the current allegations, his criminal record, failures to appear, and Parole violations. Supervision is not recommended."
Rowlett, the director of community supervision mental health, told The Rochester Voice at the time that based on her Sept. 7 assessment she didn't find him a "proper fit" for their risk assessment protocols.
"He's not from this part of the country, so based on flight and risk to the community I was against it," she said.
About a week later on Sept. 15, 2021, Levier was returned to Strafford County Jail after he was tracked by GPS in an "exclusion zone," near the domicile of the Somersworth woman he allegedly assaulted on Sept. 5.
He was released by the court again on Sept. 15, 2021, with orders for SCCC to continue to supervise his release on no bail.
Rowlett said at this point her department added an "inclusion zone," which restricts movements from his assigned domicile, but on Sept. 24, 2021, a Friday, Levier told them he was going to stay with a new friend.
She said the "inclusion zone" for his new domicile couldn't be implemented that night because they had to confer with his new roommate to make sure he was aware of SCCC's monitoring.
Just three days later on Sept. 27, 2021, Levier's "inclusion zone" became a moot point as he removed his GPS bracelet and wound up on New York Street where he is accused of entering an elderly woman's apartment, climbing into her bed and fondling her as she slept.
According to an affidavit written by Dover Det. Andrew Courter, Levier entered her residence around 1:10 a.m. on Sept. 28.
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 had violated the exclusion zone mandated by Strafford County Community Corrections when he visited the area near the first victim's residence, 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.

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."
If he is found guilty of sexual predator, it is expected that Levier will be held until deemed not a threat to public safety.