A 68-year-old Jefferson man and former Waldoboro police officer charged with the sexual abuse of two young boys pleaded guilty to lesser charges Nov. 7.
Leigh S. Abbott will serve 30 days in jail next fall, followed by two years of probation, if he meets the terms of the plea bargain. He would also pay $600 in fines.
Abbott was indicted in November 2011 on five Class A charges of unlawful sexual contact and three Class B charges of the same offense, all felonies. The state will dismiss those charges as a result of the plea bargain.
Abbott instead pleaded guilty to two counts of Class C assault, also a felony, during the Nov. 7 hearing in Sagadahoc County Superior Court.
The plea bargain places the case on hold for a year and requires Abbott to participate in general, non-sex-offender counseling and have no contact with the victims and a family member of the victims.
In a year, Abbott will be able to withdraw his plea to Class C assault and plead guilty to four counts of Class D assault, a misdemeanor.
He would then receive a sentence of 364 days in jail with all but 30 days suspended and a year of probation on two of the misdemeanor charges, with a consecutive sentence of 364 days in jail, all suspended, and a second year of probation on the other two charges.
If he violates probation, he could return to jail for the remainder of the suspended sentences.
The counseling requirement and the no-contact conditions will stay in place throughout the probation period.
Class A, B, C and D crimes in Maine are punishable by up to 30 years in prison and a $50,000 fine, 10 years and $20,000, five years and $5,000, and 364 days in jail and $2,000, respectively.
The November 2011 indictment charged Abbott with unlawful sexual contact with two young male relatives at his Jefferson residence during a 4 1/2-year period.
Six counts charged Abbott with subjecting one boy to unlawful sexual contact between October 2006, when the boy was 4 years old, and March 2011, when he was 8.
The other two counts charged Abbott with unlawful sexual contact with a 5-year-old boy on two occasions in April 2011.
The boys detailed the incidents in separate interviews with Maine State Police Detective Herbert Leighton in April and May 2011.
According to the interview summaries and a statement by a relative of the boys, Abbott also whipped one of the boys with a belt and threatened to beat the other boy with a stick.
Abbott has denied the allegations and continued to do so at the Nov. 7 hearing, although he and his attorney, Walter McKee, acknowledged that a jury could find him guilty.
A pre-trial motion by McKee detailed Abbott’s defense strategy, should the case have gone to trial. The “defense will center around the plain and simple statement that these events simply did not happen,” McKee said in the motion.
The charges against Abbott “arose following a highly suggestive, leading interview by (a family member) of the alleged victims, which was captured on video and audio,” McKee said.
“That video and audio have been reviewed by a forensic psychologist who is expected to testify, in no uncertain terms, that the manner in which the interview was conducted significantly compromised the integrity of the statements made by the children as well as any later statements concerning the alleged abuse,” he said.
Without the plea bargain, Abbott would have stood trial twice, once for each alleged victim. Justice Jeffrey Hjelm had granted a motion by McKee to separate the trials.
A single trial could have created unfair prejudice against Abbott because a jury might “consider inculpatory evidence as it relates to one alleged victim as evidence of guilt as to the other alleged victim,” according to Hjelm’s order on the motion.
According to Hjelm, prejudice exists under Maine case law when such evidence would be inadmissible in separate trials.
Assistant District Attorney Andrew Wright, at the Nov. 7 hearing, said the decision hurt the state’s ability to prosecute the case.
“This is a matter of a compromise,” Wright said of the plea bargain. The deal weighs the trauma the boys would go through on the witness stand and the uncertainty of a trial against the certainty of the plea.
The “admission of an assault against the children” is important to the victims, Wright said.
Justice Andrew Horton accepted the plea. “This is obviously a tragic case,” Horton said.
The court regularly hears similar cases that involve adults who have allegedly committed sexual crimes against young relatives, Horton said, and a significant number of those cases that go to trial end in acquittals.
The experience of testifying at trial often results in further trauma for the alleged victims in those cases, Horton said.
He called the Abbott case “an incredibly difficult situation” with “no good answers,” but said he and others who work in the system recognize the outcome as “a reasonable compromise.”
A family member of the boys submitted a handwritten statement to the court.
“This man is a sick man and needs help,” she said. “No punishment is enough punishment to make up for what (the boys) will have to live with for the rest of their lives.”
The “horrible” actions of Abbott have inflicted permanent “physical, emotional and psychological scars,” she said.
“I have faith that the justice system will make sure that this man does not have the opportunity” to commit similar crimes against other children, she said, and that the system will require Abbott to “follow through with what he needs to, so that he learns what he has done is evil and he gets the mental help he needs.”
Abbott was a police officer with the Waldoboro Police Department from 1982-2003, retiring as a patrol sergeant. He has also operated a gun shop out of his Jefferson home.
