A 40-year-old Winslow man is to begin serving a year in prison Feb. 18 for having unlawful sexual contact with a teenage girl.
Robert L. Folsom pleaded guilty to that charge Thursday at the Capital Judicial Center. In exchange for the plea, a separate count of unlawful sexual touching was dismissed.
The offense occurred in Folsom’s truck on May 1, 2015, when he repeatedly touched the victim over her clothing, according to the prosecutor.
“He offered her money to continue touching her,” Assistant District Attorney Kristin Murray-James said.
The victim kept moving his hand away and told her mother and police about it, she said.
Judge Evert Fowle imposed the sentence recommended jointly by the prosecutor and by Folsom’s attorney, Pamela Ames. Under that sentence, Folsom will spend a year in prison and an additional three years were suspended. He will spend four years on probation.
Probation conditions require Folsom to continue sex offender counseling and treatment and bar him from unsupervised contact with girls under 18 years old.
Murray-James said the victim and her family supported the sentence recommendation and did not want to attend Thursday’s hearing. She also said Folsom had no prior criminal record, and that he admitted to police that he had touched the girl.
Defense attorney Pamela Ames said Folsom sought a two-week stay to the start of the prison term in order to make arrangements for his family.
As a result of the conviction, Folsom is required to register as a sex offender for 25 years under the state’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.
At a separate hearing also held Thursday in the same courthouse, Timothy J. Williams Jr., 24, of Clinton, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assault, and the case was put on deferred disposition for a year. He was also sentenced to 30 days in jail on a disorderly conduct charge.
According to the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Tracy DeVoll, Williams hit the victim, a longtime friend, in the head with a pocket knife in an altercation late on Aug. 29, 2015.
When police responded, they found the knife where a woman had thrown it and they found Williams, who was “very intoxicated at the time,” DeVoll said. She said the victim was cut but had stopped bleeding by the time police arrived. Under the terms of the 12-month deferred disposition, Williams is required to undergo substance abuse and anger management counseling. He also is prohibited from using drugs and alcohol and from having contact with the victim.
If Williams is successful, he can withdraw his guilty plea to the felony and instead plead guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge and be sentenced to 364 days in jail, all suspended, and one year of probation. If he is unsuccessful, DeVoll said, the sentence would be up to the court.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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