I appreciate the opportunity to address the court regarding the impact of this crime and the offender's subsequent behavior. I would have read much of this during sentencing but I wasn't given an opportunity to prepare at the time. I am grateful to finally have my day in court with adequate advanced notice.

This was not, as the offender characterized it at his sentencing, "just a fight over a girl." Putting aside his attempt to speak for me, this was not a fight. This was an unprovoked assault against someone he had never met.

On the day in question, I joined a girl I had recently met for a lunch date. We were seated outdoors when the offender arrived and walked into the cafe. The girl became nervous and ran in after him without explanation. At this point, if he had bothered to simply explain the situation to me, I most likely would have cut ties with such an awkward entanglement. I was in a critical stage of launching my career at the time and had neither the time nor the inclination for this type of petty drama. But he afforded me no opportunity to reason with him, walk away or even protect myself.

According to cafe staff, the offender specifically ordered Turkish coffee - which is prepared at a significantly higher temperature than standard coffee - while berating and verbally abusing the girl after she followed him inside. His demeanor then changed to one of affected pleasantness when the coffee was prepared. He exited the cafe, concealing the coffee in his right hand while waving demurely with his left, saying "It's SOO very nice to meet you, [name]. Have a WONDERFUL day" in this artificial, saccharine tone. I remained seated without responding or acknowledging him in any way. He pretended to leave before sneaking back around to pour the scalding coffee down the back of my neck in a surprise attack. The physical impact included openly-bleeding second-degree burns that required medical attention.

Fortunately, this was the only physical impact my attacker managed to achieve. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the offender insisted on a non-sensical and self-contradictory narrative that undermined his own defense. For example, in his countersuit, he formally accused me of screaming when he poured the coffee on me. The shock of hot coffee feels a lot like ice-cold water at first - it makes it difficult to make any noise at all, but to feel compelled make such an accusation in this context is baffling. I can't imagine what purpose it could serve, unless the offender is sufficiently desperate to recover any sense of potency that he is willing to sabotage his case in order to aggrandize himself. Therefore, I feel it necessary to relate the details of his actions that day, which I have found particularly disturbing.

He tried to run after pouring the coffee, and when I caught up with him, he turned around with a look of indignation, as though outraged at the thought that anyone would dare to stand up to him. He postured as though he were preparing to attack me again, only to turn and start running again when I moved to meet him. He ran to a grassy area, ensuring himself a soft landing, then launched himself at me in an uncoordinated frenzy, losing his balance in the process and throwing himself backward onto the ground in what I guess was a bid to create distance and appear like the victim to bystanders. Sure enough, in his legal filings, he would attempt to mischaracterize this as me "tackling" him after chasing him for nearly a hundred feet. The actual measured distance from where I had been sitting to where he went down was closer to thirty feet.

With his back on the ground, the offender then attempted to kick me in the groin with both heels. I caught his heels and threw them over his head, and then met him on the ground, restraining him with one arm while applying a few short punches to his ribs with the other - measured body shots, intended to tire him out for easier restraint. He would later claim that I "beat him mercilessly" in this instant. In reality, I was interrupted when the girl ran outside and dove over his body, screaming for me to stop.

While I broke away out of concern for her safety, he took the opportunity to use her as a human shield, reaching out from behind her to attempt to grab my genitals. In order to stop him, I had to lure him out from behind the girl by keeping my genitals just out of his reach until he exposed his head from behind her. After I struck him with my knee, he hid his face in the dirt and tried to crawl back underneath the girl.

Finally, three additional bystanders arrived on the scene after hearing the girl's screaming. They intervened by blocking me and helping him to his feet. He shoved the man that helped him to his feet away in his haste to escape. In legal proceedings, he did not acknowledge the bystanders who helped him, deciding again to prioritize his image over his defense and claim that he simply pushed me aside once he had allowed me to get my fill of "beating him mercilessly", and then somehow just walked away with no further complication.

This pattern repeated itself throughout the initial encounter and in the ensuing legal proceedings. This is a pattern of boldly attacking from behind someone's or other's back, then fleeing, disorganized flailing when caught, folding when this inevitably proves ineffective, then relying on the protection of third parties to mitigate the consequences to himself. At his arraignment, he stood behind his mother and waved at me. At his sentencing, he stood behind his attorney (who came courtesy of his mother) and stared daggers at me, only to turn around and tell the court that he thinks he and I would have been great friends. Putting aside that he intended to maim me, I could never put my mother between myself and trouble, or be friends with someone who could.

The offender's own words in his legal filings reveal his mindset. His countersuit read more like a temper tantrum than a serious legal document. He opened by comparing himself to a force of nature by claiming that I should have known my one-night stand with the girl was like "jumping off a cliff" with inevitable consequences. He says this despite the fact that I didn't even know who he was, as though he were so consequential that I should have found out about him ahead of time and taken caution of him. He attempts to twist his own inadequacies into my moral failing, accusing me of "abusing my training" as though I owed him some special duty of care even as he was actively attempting to assault me. That those few short punches resulted in a ruptured spleen speaks more to his constitution than to any excessive force on my part.

He attempted to abuse the countersuit process, speaking through his attorney to make scattershot criminal allegations that amounted to little more than name calling, without even a hint of substantiation. He filed abusive discovery demands in an attempt to intimidate me and violate my privacy, including a demand to obtain the passwords of all of my online accounts along with the contact information of anyone I had so much as been on a date with in the past ten years. Just as he folded immediately when confronted during his assault, he immediately conceded his case when I produced witnesses and evidence.

Since the offender was unable to afford the settlement he agreed to, I agreed to accept the payment in monthly installments. Despite this, the offender's compliance with the settlement was initially inconsistent, it took some active prodding from my end to keep the agreed-upon monthly payments going. As I understand it via the offender's counsel, these payments have been facilitated by his family's resources. He told the court he would be returning to college to get his degree. This doesn't seem to have happened. The singular character witness who submitted a statement in his defense was the girl he was trying to impress. She claimed he had helped her overcome drug addiction - a claim that undermined only weeks later when she was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in connection with a drug deal robbery setup.

I am concerned by the court's decision to expunge his record. At his sentencing, his attorney spoke of him as if he were graduating high school kid about to begin his life and just got caught up in a silly adolescent misadventure, when he was a 24 year old adult making a conscious choice to assuage his insecurities by committing an act of performative cruelty. Outside of the mocking statement of remorse he made at his sentencing, he has exhibited none. Rather, his behavior has been characterized by obstinant pride in his actions. He has let off with non-reporting probation, with no restrictions, for an unprovoked and apparently premeditated violent felony. Granted, it did immediately and severely backfire on him, and this, the district attorney has led me to understand, was part of the justification for a more lenient sentence, and I can understand the reasoning for that. The expungement, however, is a disservice to the public. People that have to deal with him have a right to know what he is (and isn't) capable of. If someone develops concerns about him and decides to look him up, they need to be able to learn about this case.

To end with some positivity, I would mention that, despite his attempt to steal my peace during a pivotal moment in my career, I was able to channel my anger into productivity, and navigated this difficult time into a successful career launch. The offender appears to be in roughly the same place he was in 8 years ago. And while my burns have faded without so much as a scar, I believe his experience has left its own lasting lessons.

Thank you for allowing me to share the impact that this crime has had on my life and my concerns about the offender's continued pattern of behavior.