A former Department of Education bureaucrat was sentenced to 25 years in prison today for a savage sexual assault of his wife.
Laurence Harvey, 46, who’d earned $165,000 a year supervising support staff at 263 schools around the city, was also ordered to stay away from his wife for eight years after he’s released.
“My life was a living hell. He wanted to destroy me,” his wife said at his sentencing hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“I wonder how a human can suffer so much pain … He took me to the lowest level. I cried inside every day.”
Though her husband will be locked up, she still fears for her life. “He will try to find me at every cost,” she said.
Harvey offered absolutely no remorse — and offered Judge Laura Ward in Manhattan Supreme Court a 10-point rant in which he denied any crime even took place.
“I declare my innocence with the most fervor I can muster,” Harvey said. “None of these crime transpired. They were all 100 percent fabricated.
“I stand before this court as the epitome of inequality and injustice in this country,” he said.
Lead prosecutor Michele Bayer urged no pity for Harvey.
“He put on a good show for the outside world,” she said. “Look at all the people he fooled. The fact that the defendant held a responsible job does not make the defendant less of a threat.”
Harvey was arrested in December after his wife of almost 10 years reported he’d been attacked eight months earlier in the Manhattan apartment they shared with their infant twin boys.
Prosecutors had shown jurors a photo of Harvey’s wife bound and gagged. He used a hammer and a screwdriver in the assault.