March 29, 2024
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Waldoboro man cleared of sexual assault on teen

BANGOR – A Penobscot County jury on Thursday found a Waldoboro man not guilty of having sex with a 13-year-old girl last spring.

Frank J. Leathers, 19, was indicted in August on a charge of gross sexual assault. He was accused of having sexual intercourse with the girl after walking with her and her sister from the Hampden Trailer Park, where the two lived with their parents, to buy cigarettes at a Bangor gas station.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated for about three hours before announcing its verdict.

Leathers, wearing a red hooded sweat shirt and jeans, smiled broadly when he heard the jury’s decision. He hugged family and friends outside the courtroom as the jury filed out past court security officers.

“Thank God for the constitutional right to a trial,” Leathers’ attorney, Andrews Campbell of Waldoboro, said as he left the Penobscot County Courthouse.

If he had been convicted, Leathers could have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. He was indicted for gross sexual assault because the alleged victim was under the age of 14 when the alleged incident occurred.

The victim, now 14 and living in LaGrange, testified Wednesday that one night in late May or early June she and her sister, now 16, walked with Leathers from the trailer park on Main Road North in Hampden to the Irving Station on Main Street in Bangor.

The girls had met Leathers earlier in the evening, she said.

Leathers testified that he was visiting his sister, who lived in the trailer park, when he met the alleged victim at another resident’s trailer. He said the girl kept trying to sit in his lap, but he kept pushing her away.

On their way to the gas station, the alleged victim testified that she and Leathers began kissing, then walked ahead of her sister for privacy. She said that she and Leathers had sex in the grass under the Interstate 395 overpass where it crosses Main Street. The teenager told the court that while they were having sex, her sister “spied” on them.

Hampden police Officer Joel Small testified Wednesday that he began investigating the incident in mid-June when he learned of it from a third party. Small said the defendant admitted to him in a telephone conversation and interview at the Hampden police station that he had had sex with the girl.

Leathers took the stand in his own defense and denied having sex with the girl and denied confessing to Small. He said Wednesday that he walked to the store alone on the night in question, and that neither girl accompanied him. He testified that when he came out of the gas station, the girls and their mother were sitting in their truck in the parking lot and gave him a ride back to the trailer park.

During its deliberations, the jury twice asked to have portions of Small’s testimony about his conversations with Leathers read back.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Roberts said after the verdict that he was disappointed the jury apparently had given more weight to the defendant’s testimony than to Small’s testimony.

“It disturbs me that 12 jurors found that a police officer lied,” he said Thursday.


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