September 21, 2024
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Bangor man gets 10 years for child porn

BANGOR – A local man charged in state court with sexually abusing five girls at different times in his Husson Avenue apartment was sentenced Friday in federal court to 10 years in prison on federal charges of possessing child pornography.

Roger Dales Bates, 56, also was sentenced in U.S. District Court to spend two decades on supervised release with stringent conditions after he completes his federal prison term.

Bates is scheduled to plead guilty and to be sentenced on Monday in Penobscot County Superior Court in Bangor on state charges of unlawful sexual contact, unlawful sexual touching, unlawful sexual misconduct with a child and other charges. He allegedly compared the girls’ body parts to grocery items.

In that court, he faces up to 30 years in jail on one of the unlawful sexual contact counts because the girl was under age 12 when the incident allegedly occurred.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock imposed the 10-year, mandatory minimum federal sentence Bates faced for possessing a video of child pornography because of a 1990 conviction for sexually abusing a child under the age of 14 in a Lancaster, Mass., motel. Bates served a year on probation in that case.

He also has convictions for drunken driving, assault, terrorizing and other crimes.

“You are precisely the person Congress had in mind when it enacted the mandatory minimum,” Woodcock said. “You violated the trust of the girls’ parents, who entrusted you to care for these girls. You are unwilling even today to confront your own demons. Your conduct is wholly reprehensible and disgraceful.”

The judge referred to Bates’ denial Friday of details outlined in court documents about how he allegedly touched the two girls who went with their mother to Bangor police after Bates babysat them during a weekend in August 2005.

Woodcock said Bates needed to be supervised by the U.S. Department of Probation after his release from prison for a long period of time. Conditions imposed included registering as a sex offender, not possessing alcohol or other intoxicants and not possessing guns or computers. He also must undergo sex offender treatment and substance abuse counseling.

“I need to make certain that no young girl is ever again victimized by your presence,” the judge said.

Bates, who walks with a forearm crutch, sat stone-faced at the defense table as Woodcock admonished him about his behavior in and out of court. The defendant did not address the court about his sentence.

Although some of the parents of the victims attended the hour-long sentencing hearing, they did not address the judge and declined to comment after the sentencing.

Bates pleaded guilty in April 2006 in federal court to one count of possession of child pornography. A second count is expected to be dismissed now that he has been sentenced.

The federal charges arose from a search of Bates’ apartment after two of the five girls he’s charged with abusing came forward. Police found two videos with images of three different local girls on them. One of them showed a girl engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to court documents.

Bates’ attorney, Wayne Foote of Bangor, on Friday filed an appeal to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston over the imposition of the mandatory 10-year sentence. If the 1990 conviction had not been used in determining sentence, Bates would have faced between seven and nine years in federal prison under the federal sentencing guidelines.


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