AUGUSTA — A city man who repeatedly stabbed his estranged wife in the head and upper body in June 2013 was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years in prison, with all but eight years suspended, and six years’ probation.

David Delesline, 45, pleaded guilty March 11 to elevated aggravated assault in an attack on Amy Delesline, now known as Amy Flanagan, and had been awaiting sentencing.

The final sentence was recommended by both the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Joelle Pratt, and Delesline’s attorney, Scott Hess. While Flanagan said she would have liked it to be longer, she told the court she understood the factors that had to be considered.

Outside the courthouse afterward, Flanagan showed the multiple pale scars on her upper arm, at the base of her neck and just above the hairline of her forehead. “He stabbed me 17 times,” she said. The stabbing occurred about 1 a.m. June 9, and she was granted a divorce nine days later.

“Mentally and emotionally, I’m getting by one week at a time,” she said, adding that she is anxious and nervous much of the time. “I’ll be living with it for the rest of my life.”

She said her sons, who witnessed her bleeding and screaming for help in the middle of the night, also have emotional scars and are afraid to trust men.

Her family moved to Lewiston after the stabbing to be closer to her parents, who also live in the city.

In the courtroom at Kennebec County Superior Court on Tuesday, Flanagan began crying as soon as Delesline appeared in handcuffs and shackles. A friend and her parents put their arms around her to comfort her.

Delesline, who was in a green jail uniform over a gray, long-sleeved sweatshirt, told the judge he had agreed that the charge could be amended to give him a longer probation, but he said little else.

His attorney read a statement by Delesline, apologizing to Flanagan and to her children.

“I stand before the court truly ashamed of the man I’ve become,” the statement said. “I took out my rage in life against my poor defenseless ex-wife.”

Flanagan also read a written statement to the judge, speaking rapidly and describing a series of threatening text messages that she later learned had come from Delesline over the two days prior to the incident.

She encountered Delesline several times, and she said he had been drinking. She also said she had agreed to allow him to stay in her York Street apartment until the divorce hearing because he had been staying at a shelter.

About 12:30 a.m. June 9, 2013, she said, she told him he had to leave, and she locked the kitchen door and window.

Twenty minutes later, she said, she encountered him at her bedroom door.

“I saw him coming at me with one hand behind his back, and that is when he began to what I thought (was) punching me,” she said in her statement. “Then I felt the object go into my head as he also knocked my cell phone out of my hand, and the phone scattered across my kitchen floor, and I felt the blood coming down my face, and I hunched over screaming, ‘Please stop. You’re going to kill me’ while trying to escape my home while he was continuing to attack me in my arms and my upper right side of my back.”

Flanagan described running from house to house and even waving down vehicles to try to get help. Finally, she flagged down a police officer.

Flanagan was taken by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center.

She also said a friend who watched her animals for her found a suicide note Delesline had left on her television. He was arrested three days after the stabbing and charged with elevated aggravated assault.

“I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since I was stabbed,” she told the judge. She said she was particularly worried because “I know he won’t follow any of the rules he has to follow while on probation.” She cited Delesline’s convictions for domestic assault against a previous wife and an ex-girlfriend.

“As I am the victim, I want justice served,” she said. “I am a single mother of the children, and I am all they have to support and provide for them. My kids cannot lose me. David Delesline has ruined me, my children, family and friends because of what he has done to me.”

Flanagan’s mother, Vella Tisdale, spoke in court as well, saying that Delesline was “a drunk and a drug addict.” She told him, “We opened our heart and home to you, and this is how you repay us — by stabbing Amy.”

Hess told the judge that Delesline was diagnosed after the incident with bipolar disorder and has been on medication for that while he has been held in jail.

Delesline, in his written statement, said, “I had way too much to drink and I can’t remember the details. When I read the statements Amy wrote, I couldn’t believe what I was capable of. I will never let alcohol control me again, so there will never be another victim of domestic violence at my hands again.”

Betty Adams — 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @betadams