SKOWHEGAN — A close friend of Andrew Maderios’ former girlfriend testified Wednesday that she received text messages from the woman in January, February and July saying she’d been injured by Maderios.

When the friend went to the home that the woman shared with Maderios, at the time a Nokomis High School music teacher, the friend found her crying and shaking, she testified Wednesday in the third day of Maderios’ trial in Somerset County Superior Court on nine counts of domestic violence abuse.

But Maderios, 29, of Pittsfield, who took the stand in his own defense later in the day, said he never strangled his girlfriend. He testified that she was the aggressor and told him if he ever left her, she’d ruin his life, his career and his future.

“She said, ‘If you ever ask me to leave, I will accuse you of abusing me’ and call my (school district) superintendent and cause me to lose my job, and she was going to ruin my life,” Maderios testified.

Maderios wept on the stand Wednesday as he described how his former live-in girlfriend would tell him he was not a good father figure to her two girls and that he was not even a good teacher. He tearfully told the jury how his accuser would call his mother an alcoholic, his father a fake and his sister a crazy woman. He said he never strangled the woman, and never put his hands on her except to defend himself from her attacks.

“There was no first time. There was no second time. There was no any time,” he said of the beatings and strangulations alleged by the woman in the nine-count indictment against him.

In fact, Maderios said, he was on a couch watching TV on July 4, 2014, when the woman dialed 911, waving the phone in the air, saying, “Help. Help. I need help right now,” he said under direct examination by defense attorney Caleigh Milton, an assistant to Maderios’ lead attorney, Leonard Sharon.

Maderios is accused of subjecting his then-girlfriend to months of abuse before he was arrested in August 2014 as he stepped off an airplane in Georgia on a return trip from a student educational tour of Europe. He spent 11 days in a Georgia jail before being brought back to Maine to face the charges against him.

The friend of the accuser testified for the prosecution Wednesday morning in the jury trial, which is expected to last until the end of the week.

“She was sitting on the stairs crying, shaking, choking. She was a mess, actually,” the friend testified Wednesday. “Her voice was raspy, choking. It was hard for her to get a word out.”

The trial is set to resume at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.