AUBURN — The mother of Matthew Giguere’s children stood at the railing in Androscoggin County Superior Court on Thursday and read him a statement as he stared at the ceiling.
Matthew Giguere sits Thursday in Androscoggin County Superior Court in Auburn awaiting sentencing on sex trafficking and other charges. Chris Williams/Sun Journal
“You changed my life when you wanted me to go with other guys to make money for our addiction,” she said. “I left our relationship scared of men and thinking every man wants what you wanted and that was to use me for money.”
The woman, who is mother to two of his children, recounted the time Matthew Giguere, 30, had broken her arm and when he dragged her by the hair onto the street because she was tired and hungry and did not want to have sex for money.
He would send her on as many as nine “dates” per day, and she complied because she was afraid he might leave her or hurt her, she said.
She recalled the time she had been raped by two men. After telling Giguere about the assaults, she said, his “exact words were, ‘Did you at least get any money?'”
“You have tried to degrade me and make me feel worthless, and you did for a short time in my life,” she said. “You’re someone who has no respect for women and you made me have no respect for myself. But I realized that it was all due to you bringing me down and telling me you’re all I have.”
Giguere was sentenced Thursday to 364 days on charges of sex trafficking and domestic violence, both misdemeanors.
Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice William Stokes also sentenced the Twin Cities transient to 39 months in prison for four counts of violating conditions of release, all felonies, to be served at the same time as the misdemeanors. He will start serving that time immediately, Stokes said.
Giguere is at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, serving 21 months of an eight-year sentence for theft, burglary, aggravated criminal mischief and illegal possession of a firearm.
Thursday’s sentence will run consecutive to the time he has been serving.
When the mother of his children went to jail on unrelated charges and could not work the streets, Giguere struck up a relationship with a different woman and put her to work for him.
While in prison, he sent a letter to her and called her three times using a pseudonym, a violation of his conditions of release on the sex trafficking charges that were pending.
Giguere would “rob me and throw me down flights of stairs and strangle me,” that woman wrote in a letter that a trial assistant read in court Thursday.
He put her in dangerous situations with dangerous people, she wrote.
Giguere “emotionally and mentally beat me to the core. That took everything out of me, the name calling, criticizing and always talking down to me. I couldn’t do anything right,” she wrote. “He tricked me into thinking that he loved me and had my best interests in mind. But he didn’t. It was all for his gain.”
She felt “worthless,” she wrote, cutting herself and contemplating suicide.
“I felt like the choice to live or die was the one thing I had control over,” she wrote.
In a brief statement, Giguere apologized to the mother of his children and called the other woman a liar.
Justice Stokes called Giguere’s behavior toward women “reprehensible.” He referenced Giguere’s lengthy criminal record of 29 convictions.
“He has spent the better part of his adult life committing crimes, and caps it off with basically selling the bodies of females, of women, so that he can satisfy his addiction, to get money so that he can buy drugs,” Stokes said.
“It strikes me as almost beyond comprehension that someone like Mr. Giguere could exert the type of control and power that he was able to do” over the two women, one who was addicted to crack cocaine, the other to heroin, Stokes said.
Both women said they had begun to regain control over their lives through therapy and counseling.
“I’m stronger now even though I never should have had to endure what I did, forcing me to find that strength to survive,” one of the women wrote in her statement.
The other woman urged Giguere to better himself during his time in prison.
“Your kids will come look for you when they are older,” she wrote. “Do you want them to see you as a bad person? No. And I don’t either. I hope and pray that you find help. I did. And life is already better.”
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