 A highly decorated police chief accused in the past of covering for a child molester just plead guilty to child molestation himself and received a meager 4 year sentence, despite admitting to repeatedly molesting a 4-year-old relative.
From Portland Press Herald:
One of the mostly highly decorated police officers in Maine’s history was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison for sexually assaulting a 4-year-old child.
Andrew Demers Jr., the former chief of the Maine State Police, broke down sobbing at one point during his sentencing hearing at the Cumberland County Courthouse, wiping tears from his eyes many times after he entered a guilty plea to a felony charge of unlawful sexual contact.
Superior Court Justice Thomas Warren sentenced Demers to five years, with the final year to be suspended while Demers serves a three-year probation term. The judge also ordered Demers to pay $5,000 restitution to pay for past and future counseling for the child.
Demers’ arrest on March 17 shocked the state’s law enforcement community, many of whom had considered him a model officer. Demers is the only officer in Maine history to be twice named the state police Trooper of the Year and was named Legendary Trooper in 2003. He served 26 years with the state police and held the department’s top position from 1987 to 1993, when he retired.
As Warren issued his sentence, he rejected a claim by Demers’ clinical psychologist that Demers’ actions were out of character and may have been a result of neurological damage from post-traumatic stress from decades of police service.
“Crimes like this come from a dark place within a person that are often buried deep within and unknown,” Warren said at the end of the three-hour hearing.
The courtroom was filled with Demers’ family members and supporters, many of whom spoke on his behalf or submitted letters attesting to his exemplary character.
At the side of the courtroom, the child’s parents sat silently near Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson, who prosecuted the case and asked for a sentence of eight years.
Before he was arrested, Demers admitted to investigators to assaulting the child multiple times.
State police first received a tip about the alleged crimes on March 10 and referred the matter to the district attorney, who asked the sheriff’s office to investigate.
Anderson said in her 34 years practicing criminal law, she has made thousands of sentencing recommendations, but found Demers’ case to be one of the hardest.
“This is not something I take lightly at all because Colonel Demers was my hero, too,” Anderson said. But later she added, “There is no evidence of diminished mental capacity. That’s why I say we have a child molester here.”
[...]Demers pleaded guilty as part of an agreement reached by McKee and Anderson in which a more serious Class A felony charge of gross sexual assault was dismissed. He could have faced up to 30 years on that charge.
The District Attorney’s Office and McKee arranged for Demers to turn himself in at the county jail. The police department under Demers was accused in the past of failing to pursue charges against an accused child molester whom hosted regular dinners for the police, the accused was later found guilty of child molestation:
[...] state police [under Demers' leadership] came under fire for failing to pursue allegations that the founder of the Cole Farms Restaurant in Gray had molested several boys in the 1970s.
After state police dismissed the allegations, saying they were too old, the accuser turned to the District Attorney’s Office, which then charged Warren Cole with sexually molesting a young boy in 1986 and 1987. Cole was sent to prison in 1992.
State police were accused of failing to pursue the case because of their close relationship with Cole, who hosted dinners for troopers at his restaurant.
State police also were scrutinized for an incident in which a trooper shot a friend of his former wife a few months after he came close to killing himself with a shotgun. The trooper said his supervisors knew about his near-suicide. Demers wouldn’t say why he didn’t take the trooper off the job, citing confidentiality regarding personnel matters.
Also in 1992, a state trooper and Somerset County sheriff’s deputies were criticized for storming the cabin of a woman and shooting her to death after spending 10 minutes negotiating with her. Demers said there were no grounds for disciplining the officers. Some "hero."
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