By Julie Manganis
Staff writer
March 28, 2008 12:32 am HAMILTON — A man convicted of trying to strangle a Hamilton woman to death last year was sent to prison for 20 years yesterday by a judge who told John Carey that "nobody in their home should ever be subjected to this kind of treatment." "No 12-year-old should ever have to come into a room and have to save his mother," Judge Richard Welch told Carey, 48, of Braintree, who was convicted by a Newburyport Superior Court jury Wednesday of attempted murder, home invasion, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and assault and battery. "Human beings need a place to be safe, and that's what a home is for," Welch said. But Rosemary Diskin no longer feels safe and secure in her Appaloosa Way home, and neither does her son, not since the night of June 6, when Carey showed up at their home. Carey, a former neighbor, told Diskin he was there to meet her husband, Tim, for a drink. But Carey had already called Tim Diskin and knew he wasn't at the home that night. Once inside, Carey and Rosemary Diskin talked briefly. Diskin said Carey suddenly pulled out a cord and put it around her neck, twisting it hard against her throat. As she struggled, she said, Carey dragged her through the kitchen. Her son said he heard the commotion and came downstairs, to find his mother partly on the floor, Carey straddling her with a necktie around her throat. He tried to stab Carey with a kitchen knife, but it broke. As the little boy beat his fists on Carey's back, Carey continued holding on for a few more moments before letting go, then running out. Outside, he dropped part of the tie, which had both his and Diskin's DNA on it. That became a crucial piece of evidence against him. Prosecutor Kim Faitella argued to jurors that Carey was attempting to act out his ultimate sexual fantasy of strangling a woman to death — a scenario depicted in hundreds of images found on his computer after his arrest. For months, Carey claimed that the act was consensual, that the two had been having an affair and that the strangulation was part of their sex play. But yesterday, he tearfully apologized to Diskin, her husband and their son, admitting that he had violated the trust of his former neighbors. "I did wrong," Carey told the Diskins, seated together in court. He admitted that he had violated the trust of a couple he had known for 15 years. "There's nothing I can say to Rosemary and (her son) that's going to make them feel any better. I can only apologize to them." Carey — who just three days earlier had taken the stand to insist that what he had done was consensual — said yesterday that he now prays for the family. "I was walking in the dark for many years. I walk in the light now," Carey said. Rosemary Diskin, in a victim-impact statement, blasted Carey as "an evil, horrible, dangerous, twisted man" who had robbed her entire family of their sense of security. "John Carey has shown no remorse at all, and his fabricated stories are disgusting and sick," Diskin said. "I would not be alive today if it weren't for (my son). John Carey did not stop strangling me after my son appeared in the kitchen, so what do you think he was planning to do after he murdered me? John Carey was going to strangle me to death, and it's a horrible, horrible feeling to think of what he would have done after that." She said her son is still terrified of being alone in the house. Just this week, when he returned home from school before Diskin had arrived home from the courthouse, she said, her son locked himself in his room. "You've done an unbelievable number on my son," Diskin said to Carey. Diskin said she still suffers neck pain and post-traumatic stress, and has constant nightmares. The incident also affected her husband, her sisters and her mother, who now has trouble sleeping, Diskin said. And she feared the reaction of others in her small community when Carey's defense was first reported. "I had the dreadful fear that when people saw me they would think that I had some relationship with him or shared his sick perversions. "It was horrifying what John Carey did to me, and I don't think I'll ever completely recover or understand why he chose me," Diskin said. Faitella had asked for a slightly longer term of 20 to 25 years in prison, while Carey's lawyer, Kirk Bransfield, sought a term of eight to 10 years. Welch's sentence of 20 years for the home invasion, and a concurrent 18 to 20 years for attempted murder, will be followed by five years of probation on the assault and battery counts. He was also ordered to take part in sex offender treatment — although none of the charges he was convicted of will require him to register as a sex offender — and substance abuse treatment. Bransfield said yesterday he has filed a notice of appeal in the case. Welch, who said Carey had "evil in his heart" on that night, hoped the sentence reflected the "incalculable" harm Carey caused to the Diskin family.
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