Man From Hill Receives 30-Day Jail Sentence On Sexual Assault And Second-Degree Assault Charges

CONCORD, NH — A man from Hill pleaded guilty to felony second-degree assault and misdemeanor sexual assault charges after being accused of repeatedly raping a girl between October 2020 and October 2021.

Sumner Doten, 46, was indicted in 2025 on six aggravated felonious sexual assault charges and again this year on two sexual assault and nine aggravated felonious sexual assault charges. There was a mistrial in February, but the Merrimack County Attorney’s Office went at the case again.

Doten was supposed to go to trial later this month, after a motion in limine hearing was booked for next week. But Jeffrey Garrett Tynes, a prosecutor with the county attorney’s office, said several witnesses connected to the case had moved out of the state — one lives in Maine while another lives in Hawaii, and others have “mobility issues,” Tynes said. The victim herself, he added, lives in the southwestern United States. The victim also suffered from anxiety issues, which made travel difficult. He said the victim agreed to the plea deal while stressing she wanted him to be registered as a sex offender.

“Ultimately,” he said, “that was (the victim’s) goal.”

The charges were lowered to a three-and-a-half-to-seven-year jail sentence on the second-degree assault charge, all suspended, and a 12-month jail sentence on the sexual assault charge, with all but 30 days suspended. He will also be on probation for five years and will have to undergo sex offender treatment.

Tynes noted the sentence carried jail time over Doten’s head if he failed to abide by the conditions of the sentencing.

Judge Dan St. Hilaire said, given the previous mistrial and the inability to get witnesses to a trial, he would accept the plea, even though “it was lower than somebody would normally get in this circumstance.”

Victim Offers A Statement

The victim, a woman now in his early 20s, appeared over Zoom during the proceeding.

She thanked the court for their time and said it was difficult living with the harm Doten caused her. She said he raped her repeatedly during a year when she was 16 after her family moved to the state. She trusted him, she said.

“I looked up to him as a father,” she said.

She hoped to start a new life in New Hampshire with her family. Doten, she said, knew about a prior sexual assault as a child and raped her anyway. The betrayal, she said, “changed every part of her life.” She never knew when the next violation would come and she was living in constant fear, even years later.

“There are days when the stress and flashbacks become so overwhelming that it affects me physically just as much as it does emotionally,” she said.

After the incidents, she said, the victim lost her home and much of her family, requiring her to move out of state at 17. But she was able to advocate for herself, graduate high school, and move away, on her own, to the western part of the country.

The victim is now engaged to a caring man, she said, but the damage done to her still affects her life.

The victim also condemned the justice system for taking so long to get closure on the charges.

“I’m not here today because I want revenge,” the victim said. “I am here because I need the court to understand that the consequences of this crime have rested solely on me for these last six years and they did not end when I finally got out (of New Hampshire) or now that the case is over. They have followed me every day since and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.”

Doten is required to turn himself in to the jail on Aug. 27.

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