AUBURN — The Maine Attorney General’s Office is seeking a court order to prevent a Lewiston man from contacting women he’s victimized, and has advised that further violence or threats against women could be treated as hate crimes.

The state alleges that Joshua Drew, 27, is biased against women, according to court papers. He has four convictions of domestic violence assault. He has also violated conditional release five times and has twice violated protection from abuse orders. He also has a conviction for cruelty to animals.

In one case, he beat and kicked a Livermore Falls woman, according to court records, then he killed her kitten.

Court papers describe him as having no remorse.

“Do you know what I’m in here for?” he once asked a Somerset County Jail guard. “I’m here for beating bitches,” according to court records.

Drew wrote about his anti-women feelings on an inmate request form at the jail, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

“I do not feel remorse and I am not sorry for the things I have done,” Drew wrote, according to the complaint. “My only regret is that I didn’t do worse to the women I assaulted.”

That amount of evidence is rare, Maine Attorney General William Schneider said in a written statement.

“It is rare to have evidence of a civil rights violation motivated purely by bias against all women,” Schneider said. “The Civil Rights Act is one tool to stop violence against women based on this kind of seething hatred of women as an entire class of people.”

The injunction would prohibit Drew from having contact with his past victims. It would also increase punishment for any further crimes.

Under the Maine Civil Rights Act, the Maine Attorney General’s Office can obtain injunctions against individuals who use physical force or violence or the threat of physical force or violence motivated by bias against race, color, religion, sex, ancestry, sexual orientation, national origin, or physical or mental disability. Violations are punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Drew was being held at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland after a probation violation conviction in Androscoggin County. He is due to be released in the fall.

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