NORWAY – People who dial a toll-free number for the Rape Education and Crisis Hotline are being referred to a pay-per-call sexual fantasy talk line for men because the phone number was reassigned.

In what a telephone company official called a “terrible” coincidence, the old number for the rape crisis hot line was reassigned in October to a company called Intimate Encounters.

To make matters worse, the Verizon 2001 phone book lists the old number for the Rape Education and Crisis Hotline.

“How can they give [the number] to someone else when supposedly it’s still being published as ours?” asked Shari Smith from Rape Education and Crisis Hotline. “This isn’t right.”

Here’s how it happened: The crisis hot line’s old number was retired a year ago when a new statewide rape crisis number became available to tie together all 10 centers, Smith said. All was quiet for a year, until the number was assigned by Primetel of Pennsylvania to a subsidiary, Intimate Encounters.

People calling the REACH number that is still listed in the phone book are asked to call a second number, where a sultry voice encourages callers to provide a credit card number and “to go live and one-on-one.”

Verizon, which published the phone book, was never informed of the change by REACH’s service provider, Allnet. “This is just terrible,” said Peter Reilly, a spokesman for Verizon.

Smith’s only recourse until the next phone book comes out is to plead with Primetel to abandon the 800 number.

A spokesman for Primetel’s service provider, Pilgrim Telephone, said it’s unlikely the company would give up the number because they’ve probably spent money on advertising.

Primetel arbitrarily picked REACH’s old number out of a pool and would have had no possible way of knowing who had used it.

Smith said she has asked the Maine Coalition of Rape Crisis Centers to try to help her straighten out the mess.

“If it wasn’t published in the phone book, I could live with it,” she said. “But considering that people are still calling that number looking for assistance, I’m not comfortable letting it go.”