The former Shaker Road School assistant teacher who raped a teenage student in 2013 and 2014 hung his head in Merrimack County Superior Court on Wednesday after he heard a statement from his victim, describing the “nightmare that truly lasted over the past five years of my life.”

Donald Levesque, 31, pleaded guilty to two charges for aggravated felonious sexual assault and two felony charges for manufacturing child pornography. He was sentenced to serve a minimum of 20 years in state prison.

A victim coordinator from the Merrimack County attorney’s office, Karen Sotile, read an impact statement from the boy, who met Levesque when he entered the private school as a sixth-grader. Levesque, who was also a youth football coach, asked the boy for sexual photos beginning when he was in eighth grade and later compelled him to perform sex acts, prosecutor David Rotman said.

In his statement, the boy wrote that the “things I was forced to do and live through will never leave my mind.”

“There’s one thing that people don’t understand about this type of thing,” he wrote in his statement that Sotile read in court. “These types of things happen because kids trust adults in their life. I’d always been taught as a child to do what the teacher told you to do, to trust the adults in your life, to always listen to adults and do what you’re told.”

The boy, who is now 17, said he was manipulated by Levesque’s “disgusting tactics” at a “crucial time in my life where I was supposed to be growing as a person and figuring out who I am.”

“I will always think of this nightmare whenever I’m asked why I don’t act like a normal teenager or why I can’t take a joke,” he said. “He deceived me into thinking this was all my fault.”

Before sentencing, Rotman summarized a list of allegations against Levesque, and Judge Diane Nicolosi asked the defendant: “Is what the state just told me accurate?”

Levesque, who wore a three-piece navy suit, glasses and shaggy black hair, paused momentarily and replied through a cracking voice: “Uh, yes.”

Under the negotiated plea deal, Levesque will serve two consecutive sentences of 10 to 20 years in state prison, with an additional suspended sentence that Rotman said “will hang over the defendant’s head for the majority of his life.”

Rotman said the U.S. attorney of New Hampshire has agreed not to pursue federal charges for manufacture and possession of child pornography in exchange for Levesque’s guilty pleas. The state, too, will not prosecute a number of other indictments that are pending against Levesque.

Defense attorney Jim Moir said he believed the state’s recommended minimum sentence of 20 years was too stiff for the crimes Levesque committed. Levesque told the judge that part of the reason he was pleading guilty was to avoid the stiffer penalties that could come about from a federal conviction for manufacturing child pornography.

Nicolosi said she understood the potential sentence for Levesque, if he were convicted on federal charges, would be 25 years to life in prison.

Under the plea deal, Levesque has no right to have any part of his sentence suspended, Moir said. He also waived his right to have his sentence reviewed.

Rotman said Levesque met with the boy between 10 and 15 times from early 2013 to April 2014 and the juvenile said “that on each occasion sexual activity took place between them.”

Police executed a search warrant on Levesque’s apartment and found videos he recorded of the boy performing a sex act on him, Rotman said.

The judge said she didn’t feel the sentence was excessive, given the circumstances of this case in which a teacher “abused” a position of authority.

“I think all of us parents who send our children to school put our trust in teachers and those who come into contact with our children to guide them, teach them and protect them,” Nicolosi said.

Levesque looked to the ground as bailiffs led him out of the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back.

(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)

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