PORTLAND – Gov. Angus King apologized Monday for the abuse suffered by former students of the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf, and offered to help them find money in the state budget for a compensation program.

“I apologize on behalf of the state,” he said during a question-and-answer session with reporters after a news conference on the sale of the Bath Iron Works dry dock in Portland.

“I think that what happened there to these people was horrendous,” King said. “I think the state bears, to large measure, responsibility for it. The state should apologize for it and the state should set up a compensation system.”

He said he never has wavered in his belief that the state owes the victims a formal apology and compensation. King’s apology came in the wake of the death of a deaf Scarborough man who was shot by police during a standoff last week.

Police and others familiar with the case believe James Levier, 60, was suicidal and wanted police to shoot him. On Friday, Levier marched in a shopping plaza with a hunting rifle pointed in the air. Police shot him as he leveled the rifle in their direction.

Levier was among the former students seeking compensation for abuse suffered at the state-run school in Falmouth. He told state legislators that the abuse he suffered when he attended the school from 1949 to 1957 contributed to lifelong depression, suicidal urges and violent outbursts.

Some deaf activists called Levier a “martyr” for their cause and said King’s apology is a crucial step.

“The general reaction from the deaf community was a sigh of relief in hearing Gov. King directly apologize for the past abuses,” according to a statement issued by Roxanne Baker, chairwoman of Baxter’s school board, Jonathan Connick, executive director of the Maine Center on Deafness, and Stephen Gagnon, a member of A Safer Place, a group formed to help former abuse victims.

“He was being a martyr,” Baker said. “He did it for us to get others to listen and pay attention to us.”

They said it was the first time a Maine governor has apologized for the abuse that happened decades ago.

In 1982, the state Attorney General’s Office found that school staff members, including top administrators, abused students. The investigation also found that improperly supervised staff members sexually abused students and complaints were not adequately investigated by the state.

King said “if one of the factors was his despondency over the state’s failure to address this [Baxter abuse] issue, the tragedy is that we’re on the very margin of having it solved.”

The Legislature is considering three bills that seek to compensate and offer an individual apology to each victim.

“I’m going to sign it,” King said Monday of the legislation package.

His spokesman, John Ripley, said that the governor “was very clear … when the bill comes through whether it’s $5 million, or $4 million or $3 million, he’ll be working with legislators to try to find them the money.”

Earlier this month, a state Department of Education official said at a public hearing that he had concerns about the legislation.

On Monday, department spokesman Yellow Light Breen said his comments had been misconstrued to mean that King opposed the compensation plan and apologizing to abuse victims.

Breen said he meant the bills needed more specific criteria to determine who would be eligible for compensation and an individual apology from the state.

“We were not saying don’t apologize,” he said Monday. “We were saying make sure you pay attention to how you draw the criteria.”