More on Louf here and here.

Jury finds MMA trainer guilty on 11 counts in abuse case
Sentencing hearing slated for next week
BY JULIE MANGANIS STAFF WRITER 15 hrs ago


Joseph Louf

SALEM — A former mixed martial arts instructor from Salem was found guilty Monday of repeatedly abusing his girlfriend, leaving her so disfigured she was unrecognizable to her own family, and nearly blind from two detached retinas.

Joseph Louf, 40, who owned the American Total Defense gym in Beverly until his 2014 arrest, will be sentenced next Tuesday in Salem Superior Court for mayhem, maiming and nine counts of assault and battery.

His victim was a now-31-year-old Gloucester woman who'd met Louf on the dating website Match.com and later joined his gym in 2012. The two began dating that year and eventually lived together in his Salem apartment, where, she told jurors, his abuse escalated to near-daily beatings before she fled.

For months during the relationship, Louf and the woman blamed her injuries and her dramatic weight loss (she was a skeletal 104 pounds when she left) on her participation in MMA fighting.

But after she left, and underwent emergency surgery to save her eyesight, she told family members and then police that she'd been beaten repeatedly by Louf. He'd broken her nose more times than she could count, police said at the time.

A Salem Superior Court jury deliberated for about eight hours over two days before reaching a verdict Monday afternoon.

Louf was found guilty of one count of mayhem, for the repeated, disfiguring breaking of her nose; a charge of maiming, for punching out the stitches on her cheek; assault and battery causing serious bodily injury, for kneeling on her eyes until she suffered detached retinas; assault and battery on a pregnant person, and multiple counts of assault and battery with various weapons including a belt buckle, bottle opener, rubbing alcohol poured on her face, and for dragging her around by her hair.

He was found not guilty of one count of mayhem, a charge that he'd disfigured her lip, and the jury found that while he was guilty of stabbing the victim in the ear with a pair of scissors, she did not suffer serious bodily injury. A judge last week had also reduced a charge of attempted murder — for strangling the woman — to assault and battery, for which he was found guilty.

The jury of six men and six women read the one verdict of "not guilty" first, and for a moment, Louf looked up.

Then, for the next 11 counts, the jury forewoman repeatedly stated: "guilty."

Louf bowed his head and appeared to be crying.

Defense: 'Sports injuries'

Louf did not testify, but his defense attorney argued to jurors that the woman's injuries were the result of MMA "sparring" and fights, and claimed she had lied in order to qualify for insurance coverage for her eye surgery and plastic surgery to repair her nose and lip.

But prosecutor Kate MacDougall argued there was no evidence the woman ever took part in the extreme sport, only in karate and jujitsu classes and one karate tournament — video from which showed a helmeted and padded woman, the victim, making only minimal contact with another karate student.

And in a major blow to the defense, a witness they called told jurors the woman already had insurance coverage at the time she underwent surgery on her eyes.

During her closing argument last week, Louf's attorney, Michelle Brennan, tried to suggest a new motive: jealousy, citing testimony from two women who were with Louf at the gym when, they contend, they saw the victim driving around in the parking lot.

Both of those witnesses, called by the defense, then sat with Louf's family during closing arguments and as the jury was assembled in the courtroom on Monday morning.

“With this verdict, the jury has assured the victim that she is not at fault nor did she deserve what happened to her,” District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said in a statement after the verdict.

Brennan, meanwhile, said outside court, "I think the jury made a mistake. I don't think my client was guilty."

Asked if that meant there will be an appeal, she said, "Definitely."

Jurors leaving the courthouse Monday afternoon after the two-week trial declined to comment.

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, via email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter @SNJulieManganis.