A Sparta man who brutally attacked his girlfriend over the span of 14 hours, breaking her ribs and numerous bones in her face, was sentenced to prison Thursday for what the judge called “an absolutely outrageous set of circumstances.’’
Jacob Milton Anderson pleaded no contest to torture for the July 16 attack at his home on Warbler Drive in Sparta. The victim, who’s the mother of his son, escaped out a bathroom window. She was treated for multiple injuries, including a collapsed lung.
“This is a woman who supposedly you loved, who is the mother to your child,’’ Kent County Circuit Court Judge Mark Trusock said. “You hit her, you strangled her. You hit her with drywall tools, you threatened her with a knife. And this went on over the whole course of the day.’’
The woman has undergone at least three surgeries; more are on tap, Trusock noted. “There is just no excuse or justification whatsoever for doing this to another human being like that over this long, extended period of time,’’ he said.
Trusock sentenced Anderson to between 8 and 60 years in prison. A sentencing agreement between his attorney and the Kent County Prosecutor’s Office spared Anderson a longer sentence, the judge said.
In exchange for his plea, prosecutors dropped charges of unlawful imprisonment and assault with intent to commit great bodily harm. Torture, a charge rarely filed, is punishable by up to life in prison.
“Quite frankly, without that agreement you’d be serving a lot more years in the Michigan Department of Corrections,’’ Trusock said. “If you do get out of prison I hope you can correct yourself so that you don’t ever do this to another person.’’
The attack occurred after Anderson accused the woman of “trying to make him mad,’’ court records show. She told investigators when she tried to escape, Anderson dragged her back into the house, threatening to chain her up in the basement.
She was able to lock herself in a bathroom and escape through the window. Her injuries included numerous facial fractures and a broken hyoid, which is a horseshoe-shaped bone in the neck just below the chin. A broken hyoid “is what we see when someone has been choked to death, quite frankly,’’ Trusock said.
“I just want to say this is extremely hard and this has taken a toll on my life,’’ the victim told the court, occasionally pausing to compose herself. “I had to get surgery; I’ve had to raise my son by myself. He’s probably going to end up not knowing who his dad is. And I don’t even know how to tell him.
“I just hope that as long as he’s in jail he can just forgive himself for what he did, because I did,’’ she added.
Before he was sentenced, Anderson apologized for his conduct.
“I really tore apart a lot of people, a lot of families with this,’’ he told the court. “All I can do is spend time in prison changing who I am as a man. Hopefully, I’ll get another chance to be a father.’’