By Ward Peck

Editor

    Angela Theriault, a former employee at the Long
Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland accused of having a
sexual relationship with an incarcerated youth will serve one year in
jail as part of a plea agreement.

The deal was approved as the trial was set to begin on March 1. Under
the terms of the deal, Theriault pleaded guilty to a single count of
violating bail conditions for having contact with the alleged victim
after being instructed to have no such contact as a condition of her
release on bail. In return for the guilty plea, the Cumberland County
District Attorney’s office agreed to dismiss the four counts of gross
sexual assault in the original indictment. Those charges stemmed from
four encounters alleged to have occurred in late 2005 with a then
17-year-old boy being held in a low security unit of the youth
detention facility. Theriault was 25 at the time.

    Joanna Morrissey, a spokesperson for the Cumberland
County District Attorney’s office, said the prosecutor agreed to a plea
because the alleged victim was reluctant to testify and without his
testimony, the case could not be proven.

    Because the assault charges were dismissed,
Theriault will not be listed on the Maine sex offender registry.
Theriault has said her main goal was to stay off the registry.
According to Theriault’s attorney Joseph Goodman of Portland, the
parties had made a number of attempts to settle the case with a plea
deal. Goodman said in previous negotiations the District Attorney’s
office was insistent Theriault plead to the assault charges. Asked why
he thought the prosecution team relented, Goodman said he thought,
“they had problems with the merits of their case.”

    “There never was any quid-pro-quo,” Goodman said.

    Goodman said it would be difficult to get a
conviction without an allegation that the victim would suffer
retaliation if he did not participate in the alleged acts, although he
acknowledged if the gender roles were reversed, it might have been
easier for the prosecution to secure a conviction.

    The sentence for her guilty plea requires Theriault
to serve one year of a four-year sentence and a two-year probation
period. During that probation period, Theriault is forbidden to contact
any current or former resident or employee of the Long Creek facility.

    If Theriault violates the conditions of her
probation, she risks serving all or part of the three year suspended
sentence, Morrissey said.

“The other three years will be over her head,” Morrissey said.

    Morrissey said the violation of bail conditions for
which Theriault was convicted only recently came to light. Theriault
was released on bail on Feb. 21, 2006 and the subsequent contact was
found to have taken place on March 19, 2006. The charge was not
included in court documents until Feb. 27, 2007– two days before a
judge approved the deal.

    Morrissey would not elaborate on how the contact was discovered.

    Goodman said the prosecution discovered the contact
when they interviewed the victim in preparation for the trial.

    Goodman said the contact apparently occurred during
a party marking the victim’s release from the detention facility.

    The original case was initiated following a
telephone complaint on Nov. 29, 2005 by the alleged victim’s father
regarding money taken from his home and a possible “love affair”
between his son and an employee of the detention facility while the son
was on work release.

    The father also produced a letter, purported to be
from Theriault, containing graphic statements of a sexual nature.

    During an interview with Long Creek investigator
Michael Curry, the boy admitted to encounters with Theriault while he
was working at Verillo’s restaurant in Portland on work release.

    The boy described four occasions Theriault parked
her vehicle behind the restaurant and the boy would get inside. On two
such occasions the boy described the encounters as talking and kissing
and on the two other occasions they engaged in several sex acts.

In April of 2005, Theriault was the subject of a different
investigation based upon rumors circulating the facility that Theriault
had an ongoing relationship involving sexual contact with a different
youth. Most of those allegations were never substantiated, except for
evidence of a telephone conversation between Theriault and the resident.