Glenn Reed’s arrest last week on a sexual assault charge is the latest in a 36-year-long history of sex offenses committed by the now 69-year-old man from Searsmont.
Reed’s criminal history includes mistrials and appeals of convictions to the state’s highest court. On Monday in West Bath District Court, Judge Beth Dobson ordered Reed held without bail on a probation violation allegation.
Reed’s first sex offense occurred in 1981 when he was charged with raping a 16-year-old girl in Lincolnville. The girl said Reed offered her a ride home but instead drove her to his home in Lincolnville and raped her, according to previously published reports.
Reed was convicted in 1982 but the Maine Supreme Judicial Court overturned it in 1983, saying the trial judge erred by not allowing testimony from Reed that the girl came with him voluntarily. A second trial ended with a deadlocked jury, but he was convicted in a third trial in 1984 and served nearly three years in prison.
While fighting the rape charge, Reed was charged, and later convicted, of arson for setting a fire to collect insurance money to pay for his legal expenses.
In 1987, Reed was convicted of gross sexual misconduct and unlawful sexual contact for assaulting a 13-year-old girl. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In September 1989, the Maine Supreme Court overturned the verdict, ruling that the trial judge erred by allowing testimony from a child psychologist who told jurors that the victim exhibited signs of having been sexually abused by a family member. Reed was not retried because the girl retracted her allegations.
In March 2013, Reed was convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage store clerk in Belfast and was sentenced to six months in jail and placed on probation for a year.
In December 2014, he was charged with gross sexual assault and unlawful sexual contact after a 14-year-old girl said Reed assaulted her in 2011 in Searsmont after he provided her with marijuana. The girl revealed the assault in an essay she wrote in school.
The case ended in a mistrial when a defense witness mentioned Reed was on the state sex offender registry list. The trial judge had earlier barred any mention of Reed’s prior convictions.
The trial was rescheduled but before it began, he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to eight years in prison with all but one year suspended. He was also placed on probation for three years.
The Waldo County Sheriff’s Office charged Reed last Wednesday with unlawful sexual touching and arrested him for violating probation in the 2016 conviction after a woman said Reed touched her in a sexually inappropriate way in a vehicle.
Reed potentially could serve an additional seven years in prison – the remainder of his eight-year sentence – if he is found to have violated probation for the 2016 conviction. The new charge of unlawful sexual touching could result in a maximum of a year in prison.
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