A 39-year-old Owls Head man was sentenced Friday, Oct. 2 to four months in jail after admitting to harassing 11 girls by sending them messages on Facebook.
Sumner P. Swett was sentenced in Knox County Unified Court to 364 days with all but four months suspended on 11 counts of harassment by electronic device. He also will serve one year of probation upon his release.
The investigation into Swett began in January when young girls at Medomak Valley High School and Medomak Middle School in Waldoboro complained to the school resource officer about him, according to an affidavit filed by Knox County Detective Justin Twitchell. The girls told police Swett friended them on Facebook but they did not know who he was.
When the girls complained about his messages, he refused to stop. He told some of the girls that he knew where they lived. In one instance, he told a girl if she did not reply that she “would regret it.”
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant and checked Swett’s Facebook account and found he had been contacting young girls around the country and that the conversations would become sexual in nature. The girls at Medomak were as young as 14 years old.
The detective said in his affidavit he feared Swett’s actions would escalate to a sexual offense.
Swett was convicted in 1996 of gross sexual assault, according to the affidavit.
