Warning: extremely graphic content.

For nearly three months John Michael Siscoe confined and tortured his lover’s husband in a Toronto apartment.

When the man was not kept in a tiny bloodstained closet, Siscoe beat him with broomsticks and hammers, poured lighter fluid all over his body and set it alight, cut him with razor blades, stuck him with pins, viciously sexually assaulted him and threatened to kill both him and his parents.

Often the man’s wife, then pregnant with Siscoe’s child, watched. The woman, who like both her husband and Siscoe is developmentally delayed, was sentenced to eight years in prison in May.

By the end, the man was so battered and broken that if the police hadn’t found him on Jan. 19, 2010, he would be dead, said Justice John McMahon.

On Friday McMahon declared Siscoe a dangerous offender and sentenced him to indefinite incarceration. McMahon called him a “sick and deviant individual” capable of “human depravity of such a nature that it shocks the conscience.”

The man remains physically and psychologically scarred, in never-ending pain and terrified of being aloneEND.

“(I’m) in constant fear of him finding me and finishing what he started,” wrote the man who cannot be named because of a publication ban in his victim impact statement.

Hundreds of pages of Court documents from the hearing allow an insight into the life and mind of the man who perpetrated the worst case of physical and sexual abuse McMahon has ever seen.

They reveal a tragic childhood of neglect and violence, and an adult life riddled with increasingly violent and frightening incidents particularly toward women. As the judge read out the long list of “almost unspeakable atrocities,” Siscoe sat in the prisoner’s box alternately shaking his head and, in some instance looking shocked.

Siscoe has been diagnosed with “significant psychopathic personality traits,” a “rape preference” and anti-social personality disorder, which includes aggressive behaviour, excessive lying, manipulating others for pleasure and profit and lack of remorse. He also has a substance dependence disorder related to alcohol and cocaine.

He was already damaged when he was born in Halifax on April 30, 1971, weighing just 3 pounds, 9 ounces because of fetal malnutrition. “He was doomed to failure from day one,” said his lawyer Victoria Tucci during the hearing.

His birth mother rejected him from the beginning, trapping the hyperactive toddler in an overturned crib so he couldn’t explore. By the age of 3 and a half he had already been beaten and whipped with a belt by one of his foster fathers. A doctor noted at the time that the abused and battered child would likely have “longstanding emotional repercussions.”

When he was adopted by a couple in Montréal, the little boy could barely walk and could only speak two words. It took his adoptive parents months to break him of his habit of searching through garbage cans for food.

He showed little emotion, except for hatred, especially toward women.

His adoptive father complained they weren’t told enough about Siscoe, especially how difficult he was to deal with, kicking and punching other children his age.

His kindergarten class was described as a “disaster” and Siscoe was soon placed into a special handicapped class. He was described as a quiet, friendly child but could not function without constant supervision.

Siscoe has undergone a battery of psychological evaluations throughout his life, beginning as a young child. He has been on a slew of medications, from Ritalin for his hyperactivity to Seroquel, a powerful anti-psychotic used for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression.

An assessment at the age of 8 noted that he had temper tantrums and made violent threats against his family. He would defecate and urinate about the house, and intentionally on other children. He was also diagnosed with mild encephalopathy, a term describing a generic brain disease.

A psychological report said Siscoe had a below-average IQ of 88 at age 9, a score which would deteriorate quickly and is now 62. Though the report puts him in the “mildly mentally retarded range,” it also notes he is “modestly street smart.”

A report that same year described him as a possessive, attention-seeking child who often cheated, stole (as revenge) and was manipulative — but it also noted he could was “a warm and affectionate child who suffered from extreme emotional deprivation since his early years in life.”

At the age of ten he told his female therapist he wanted to chop her head off.

After his adoptive parents said they could no longer control him, Siscoe was moved into a Montréal group home around the age of 8. There, he continued to act out, stealing from other children and vicious temper tantrums. He says he was raped by an older boy and forced to provide fellatio, a pattern that continued for years even after moving into a different group home.

He began stealing and was repeatedly suspended, eventually dropping out of school at Grade 9. He began drinking at 14 and doing drugs by 16.

In his latest psychiatric report, Siscoe said that his childhood memories were often terrible, but he mentioned a few happy times, including a two-week exchange trip to Prince Edward Island where he went deep-sea fishing.

He left the system for good at 17.

Work was sporadic at best; he toiled at McDonald’s on three separate occasions and other fast-food joints across the country as well as stints at various strip clubs, dancing for men at one Montréal club. For the most part he led a “transient criminal lifestyle,” leaving warrants for his arrests as he moved back and forth across the country.

He supported his cocaine binging — a $180- to $400-per-day habit — by ATM fraud. On several occasions throughout his life, Siscoe was hospitalized after trying to kill himself, usually through cocaine overdose.

Siscoe’s first romantic relationship began when he was 14 with a girl he described as his “first love,” he told psychiatrist Scott Woodside in his latest evaluation. It was a “sweet and kind” relationship lasting two years.

“It means a lot … caring for the person, doing things with them as a couple,” he said in describing what love means.

Most of his adult relationships began in that same loving way. But as they progressed a grim pattern emerged: seduction, isolation, beatings and threats and violent sexual assaults. He repeatedly beat and raped two of them and emotionally abused a third.

The stories of four of Siscoe’s previous partners have been entered into court as fact. Their names are also covered by a publication ban.

In the fall of 1996, still living in Quebec, Siscoe met a young woman who has both learning and physical disabilities.

Siscoe was the roommate of a friend of hers, and one night the friend suggested the woman show him around town.

They went to a movie, had a few drinks and strolled through Jacques Cartier park. Siscoe was “polite, kind and generous.”

A few weeks later, he moved in with her and they began a relationship.

It took very little time for Siscoe to become controlling and jealous.

He no longer wanted her to attend adult education classes — or even leave the house. He told her he would get a job and provide for them both.

“No man can look at you or talk to you because I don’t want you talking to nobody,” he told her.

But Siscoe’s lack of French was making his job hunt difficult.

Once, enraged by his failure and his girlfriend continuing to attend classes, he started punching her, kicking her and pulling her hair.

She was left with bruises, and decided to stop going to school.

Siscoe then proposed moving to Winnipeg where he knew someone who could get him a job. He promised not to beat her again, and told her not to dwell in the past.

She believed the lie — one of the many Siscoe told over the years.

They got to Winnipeg in the winter of 1997, and the violence escalated.

He began to beat her regularly and force her to have sex with him.

He enjoyed making women feel pain, he would say.

“(Women) make us suffer so why can’t we make you suffer.”

To make money, Siscoe worked at a gay bar and he attempted to make the woman work as a prostitute but she refused.

Meanwhile, the woman’s grandfather who helped raise her was concerned that he hadn’t heard from her.

In April 1997, police picked her up and took her to a shelter. She told police that Siscoe threatened to kill her and her unborn child.

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Soon after, she returned to Quebec — where her nightmarish memories of those months have haunted her for the last 15 years, according to her victim impact statement.

Siscoe, meanwhile, headed west to B.C. where, in 2001, he met a 17-year-old girl. He was 30

She worked at a carnival and was having trouble with an abusive boyfriend. So Siscoe would send her nice little notes and stuffed toys.

He seemed so nice at first, she thought. “The perfect example of what I was looking for in a man,” she recalled in her victim impact statement. “He saved me from an abusive relationship or so I thought.”

He told her his name was Giovanni Papianni and that he was from Italy, where his mother still lived.

Siscoe eventually got a job at the carnival too, operating a haunted house known as the Dark Ride.

After he broke his hand in a mechanical accident, he was fired and they moved to Victoria where they lived with her family.

Siscoe made her steal cheques from her mother and the couple was arrested after attempting to cash them.

Once released, they fled to Vancouver where they both began to use crack heavily — the girl for the first time.

They found work at another carnival, and Siscoe became increasingly controlling and possessive.

The carnival travelled to Winnipeg, where Siscoe forced his girlfriend earn money as a prostitute to pay for their crack addiction.

That winter they moved to Montreal, where his girlfriend’s perceived flirtatiousness continued to anger Siscoe.

“I’m gonna kill you bitch,’ he yelled at her once while at the apartment they shared with two other people. When the police arrived, she told them she was too afraid of Siscoe to go to court.

He had told her that if she left, he would find her and kill her.

The woman eventually moved back to her family in Victoria alone, and pleaded guilty on the fraud charges.

But the couple soon reconnected over MSN and headed back out to Winnipeg together.

While there Siscoe stole a car and drove them to Regina. He was arrested and released — ut, as he did repeatedly, never came back for his court date.

In September 2002, after the woman was fired from the carnival in Thunder Bay, the couple got married. he dress was from Value Village, the rings from a helpful priest and his wife, the wedding dinner at McDonald’.

But, despite a short honeymoon period where Siscoe was “nice,” the relationship only got worse after the wedding.

Siscoe used to apologize after beating or raping her, she said. After they got married, he stopped apologizing.

By this point, cowed from violence and the threats and isolated from her family, she had stopped resisting him.

“It’s gonna happen anyway so I might as well shut up,” she thought numbly.

In October 2002, she became pregnant. She was delighted — though she “had concerns” about Siscoe being the father.

After surgery in March to prevent her cervix from dilating too soon, she was told not to have sex at risk of threatening her pregnancy.

That night, Siscoe raped her anyway.

A week later, the doctor discovered that she had a dangerous infection and she was airlifted to a Winnipeg hospital.

The baby was delivered prematurely by C-section. It was just 1 pound 8 ounces.

The baby was taken away by child services and placed in foster care.

Siscoe blamed his wife for losing their child and a year later, she broke up with him after informing him she had been unfaithful.

Siscoe quickly became violent, shoving his wife into the fridge several times and ripping her necklace from her throat.

After chasing her into the living room, Siscoe grabbed her by the waist and held a knife to his throat, threatening to kill himself.

The police later banned him from having any contact with her — condition he breached and was arrested for later in 2003.

At the end of his hearing Siscoe tried to apologize to his victims. “I cry every night. I got punched out because of it,” he said, with a giant black right eye that was nearly closed shut.

“My life was threatened for what I have done.”

But the judge agreed with the psychiatrist that Siscoe is “incapable of genuine remorse” and “has little insight into the horrific nature of what he did.” After all, McMahon notes, when the psychiatrist asked him who suffered most in his victim’s ordeal, Siscoe said, “Me. I’m still in jail and he’s working.”

At the end of the twisted four-year saga, Siscoe stood silently as he was cuffed, not knowing if he will ever get out of prison.