Knife Attack Nets Uncasville Man Four Years in Prison

Bernard Perry, who pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, gets a longer sentence than he expected.

When Bernard Perry, 35, formerly of Uncasville, pleaded guilty to second degree assault for attacking his former girlfriend with a knife on May 9, 2010, he expected to be sentenced to two years. That was what state prosecutors had recommended but, after learning of Perry’s history of domestic violence, Judge Patrick J. Clifford decided to double that to four years.   

The victim, a 29-year-old Norwich woman, told Judge Clifford at the May 23 sentencing hearing in New London Superior Court that she’d been dealing with Perry’s abuse for years. Police records show there have been numerous reports of domestic violence and that the victim had taken out restraining orders against Perry in the past. In fact, just days before the attack, the victim had asked the court to modify a restraining order to allow Perry visitation with their child.

“It never ends,” the woman told the judge. “I know when he gets out in four years, it will continue.”

The knife attack occurred at around 2 a.m. on May 9, 2010, as the victim was driving Perry to his mother’s house in Uncasville from a sports bar in Norwich. According to police reports, the couple had been arguing when Perry suddenly produced a knife and slashed his former girlfriend’s throat. The victim told police Perry began apologizing then, threatening to take his own life, he cut his wrists. She told police she used a sweater to stop the bleeding but Perry refused to allow her to drive them to hospital because he didn’t want treatment for his self-inflicted wounds.

According to police reports, the victim’s brother-in-law convinced her to seek treatment at Windham Hospital. Her neck wound required 18 stitches. Doctors told her had the wound been deeper or longer, she would have died. Initially, she told hospital staff she had been attacked by an unknown woman in Waterford. When they didn’t believe her, she said, she told them the truth and a member of the hospital staff drove her to the Norwich Police Department to file a report.

In court, the woman asked Judge Clifford to impose a harsher sentence on Perry than the state had proposed. “I could have died,” she said.   

Police reports filed with this case suggest the couple’s relationship had been stormy from the start. Police noted that the stabbing victim was the same person whom Perry had been convicted of sexually assaulting in 1999. At the time of that assault, the woman was under the age of 16. Perry, then 22, was convicted of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor and sentenced to 12 years, suspended after six, and placed on probation for another 10 years.

As part of his probation, Perry had to register as a sex offender and was not allowed to have unsupervised contact with any female under the age of 16. The couple’s relationship continued after his release from prison, although Perry’s repeated violations of the conditions of probation have earned him a number of trips back to prison in the intervening years. After the knife attack, Perry violated probation once more by fleeing the state. He was arrested by U.S. Marshalls in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 31, 2010.

Perry has been incarcerated at Corrigan Correctional Institute since his return to Connecticut, where he is serving out the remaining two years he faces for previous offenses. A stay in the execution of the four-year sentence imposed by Judge Clifford on May 23 means he won’t begin serving time for this latest assault until September 30.  Clifford also ordered that a protective order be put in place to keep Perry away from the victim until 2026.

“Your relationship with her is over,” Clifford said.