A young mom — who vomited upon learning about the “very light” prison sentence for a fiend who stabbed her 22 times — ripped the Bronx judge for suggesting her attacker deserved a chance to turn his life around.
“He stabbed me more times than the years he was sentenced for,” fumed Kaitlynn Berman, 23, in an interview with The Post on Friday — two days after the man who tried to kill her was sentenced to less than a decade in prison for the gruesome March 2025 attack.
“It was upsetting, it was heartbreaking, because it was supposed to be 20 to 25 years,” she said. “Eight years is not enough.”
Berman was left scarred and with permanent nerve damage to her hands and dace after Christopher Joseph, also 23 and the then-boyfriend of one of her friend’s, showed up at her Wakefield apartment.
The sicko claimed that his girlfriend had given him permission to have sex with Berman, which she found “very weird and uncomfortable,” she said.
When she rebuffed his advances, he flipped — grabbing a knife and stabbing her nearly two dozen times across the body, arms, throat and face before leaving her for dead.
Her 3-year-old daughter was in the next room while the vicious attack went down, and was thankfully unharmed.
“I remember being in and out of consciousness thinking I was going to die,” she said in Bronx Supreme Court during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, according to a transcript obtained by The Post.
“One of the things I was most afraid of is what would happen if I did not survive for my daughter.”
Her neighbors heard her screaming and came to check on her, she recalled in the interview Friday.
“I had to crawl back to the door to unlock it for my neighbor. And the most thing that I was worried about was my daughter, because I had no idea if he had done anything to her,” she said.
Berman was left hospitalized for 48 days while she underwent three surgeries and two blood transfusions.
Joseph pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the second-degree in September — a charge that could have sent him to state prison for 25 years.
As part of the plea deal, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark’s office requested a 10-year sentence, while Joseph’s defense argued he should only be locked up for five.
But Justice Timothy Lewis seemingly split the difference, sentencing Joseph to eight and half years behind bars — because of his age and the possibility he would turn his life around after getting out of lockup.
“The sentence of 8.5 years reflects the fact that you’re still a relatively young man,” Lewis told him, according to the transcript.
“I’m only hopeful that you find a way to become a different person and to do something positive when you get out, to in some way address what you did to Ms. Berman,” he added. “I’m hoping that you don’t become a hardened criminal who ends up spending your life in jail.”
The judge also noted Joseph may have been “under some sort of drug or narcotic” when he attacked Berman, and also was reportedly “in a gang” at some point.
“I hope you hear what I’m saying. I hope you think about what you’ve done. I’m sure you have. I’m sure you’ve had many sleepless nights. But you’ll never be able to take away what you did to Ms. Berman and how you affected her life,” he told Joseph.
“Having said all of that, it’s an agreed upon promise, and I am sentencing you as promised to eight and a half years of state prison and five years post-release supervision,” said Lewis, who was appointed to the bench by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2023.
But Berman scoffed at the notion her admitted tormentor should be allowed a second chance — calling him “a monster.”
“They said that he’s still young and has time to change his life around,” she told The Post. “I think it doesn’t matter if you have time to change your life around. I think it matters of what you already did. You need to suffer the consequences.”
Joseph “got off easy,” she said.
Berman has suffered daily trauma, both physically and mentally, in the year and a half since Joseph attacked her, she said, adding and that his punishment didn’t make up for the horrors she’ll have to relive for the rest of her life.
“I think it was a very, very light sentence,” she said. “He needs more than eight and a half years, and people really need to know who he is.
“People need to know that he’s a monster.”
