HOULTON – A local sex offender who has lived in the municipality for eight years told town councilors Monday evening that he has been beaten and harassed since speaking out at a council meeting two weeks ago about a plan that will alter how residents are notified about sex offenders living in the community.

Information about Gary Schillinger, 53, is posted on the state’s sex offender registry since he was convicted of three counts of gross sexual misconduct in 1986 and a federal charge of mailing child pornography in 1994.

A transient who lives in a minibus that he parks in various places around town, Schillinger was imprisoned in 1986 for having sex with three girls in one family, all of whom were under age 14. The federal conviction stems from charges that he used the U.S. mail to send photocopied pictures of children engaging in actual and simulated sex acts.

At a council meeting two weeks ago, panelists heard a report of the Houlton Police Department’s policy regarding the sex offender registry list. As of June 1, the department will be required to assess sex offenders and base community notification on that assessment. The new form of community notification will be done primarily through public postings within public places in town.

Schillinger described his status as a sex offender at the meeting earlier this month and said that he had been vilified and targeted for crime since people learned of his past when he moved back to town eight years ago.

On Monday night, Schillinger told councilors that the crimes against him had gotten worse since that time.

“I was severely assaulted on Main Street in Houlton by a gang of young people,” he told the board. “I was in the emergency room for four hours. Nothing was broken.”

Schillinger said that he was kicked and pummeled by the young people last week and had to crawl under his bus to escape. A few days later, he said, a man came up to him on the street and made it known that he wanted Schillinger to leave.

Schillinger added that he believed that the man wanted to harm him.

He also told the board that he had heard that one Houlton councilor, upon hearing of his being beaten, said that “they didn’t do enough to him.”

Councilors did not respond to the claim.

Schillinger said he lives in his bus because he is in the process of divorcing, and a protection order against him for verbal abuse prevents him from going home. He is staying in his bus at visible locations in town to “keep a high profile.”

“I keep a high profile to try and make a few people feel ashamed of how they treat homeless people in this town,” he said Monday evening.

Schillinger told councilors earlier this month that he is not the same man who committed those crimes 22 years ago, and that he has “not laid a hand on a child since and I will not.”

He reiterated that statement Monday.

“Your children are safe from me,” he said, “because I’m too busy trying to live.”

Houlton police Lt. Dan Pelletier said Tuesday that Special Investigator Mark Ganzel continues to investigate the attack on Schillinger. Pelletier should wrap up his investigation into the assault and criminal mischief by the end of the week.