AUBURN – A Lewiston man was sent to prison for 17 years Wednesday after pleading guilty to raping a woman and her 2-year-old daughter in what one career investigator called one of the worst cases of sexual assault he has ever seen.
Joshua A. Whitlock
Repeat sexual offender Joshua A. Whitlock, 31, of 850 Main St., pleaded guilty to charges including gross sexual assault, sexual exploitation of a minor, criminal restraint and possession of sexually explicit materials. His plea was entered in Androscoggin County Superior Court.
The charges date back to December 2008 when Whitlock is accused of sexually assaulting the young girl. According to the indictment, Whitlock held the girl's mother against her will and raped her in May the following year.
He is accused of sexually assaulting the 2-year-old on five occasions in Lisbon and Lewiston. Investigators say he also raped the girl's mother on two occasions in Lewiston.
Whitlock was also charged with nine counts of possession of sexually explicit materials, including photographs of the 2-year-old victim, police said. For that, he is also charged with sexual exploitation of a minor.
Before he was arrested in May, Whitlock was investigated by detectives in Lewiston and Lisbon as well as the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force.
"There was a tremendous amount of work putting the case together," Jonathan Pyska, a former Lewiston police detective and now Whitlock's probation officer, said when Whitlock was arrested. "It was a tough case for a lot of people."
At the time of his arrest, Whitlock was on probation stemming from a 2004 conviction for having sex with a 13-year-old girl he had met on the Internet. For that he was convicted of three counts of gross sexual assault, sentenced to nine months and a day in jail and ordered to serve four years of probation.
In court records, Whitlock is described as a sexually violent predator. He had originally pleaded guilty to the latest charges against him. However, on Wednesday, Whitlock accepted a plea agreement that garnered him 17 years in prison and 20 years of supervision upon release.
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