MECHANIC FALLS - A prison guard from Mechanic Falls has been indicted on charges that he had sex with an inmate and that he failed to report another guard who did the same.

Glen Works, 45, was charged in the case nearly half a year after he came forward to alert prison investigators about illicit sex at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham.

Works was charged Friday with gross sexual assault and with two counts of failing to report the sexual assaults of persons in custody.

A guard at the Correctional Center for roughly two decades, he remains free awaiting arraignment on the charges.

Works was indicted the same day as Bradford Howard, 36, of Lyman, the second guard charged in the case that involves a note used to blackmail a guard, sex in a prison broom closet and a false report of pregnancy.

Howard has been charged with four counts of gross sexual assault. Prison officials said Howard resigned earlier in the year.

According to court records, the case began on Feb. 26, the day a prison investigator said he was first contacted by Works. In that phone conversation, Works told the investigator that he believed Howard was having sex with possibly two female inmates at the prison.

What follows in the court documents are revelations that two female prisoners had been fighting over their relationships with Howard and that one of the inmates had handed him a note claiming she might be pregnant.

The note, according to the affidavit, was later used by a third inmate to blackmail Howard and prevent him from moving another inmate away from her friends.

A prison investigator said in the court document that one of the inmates admitted to having sex with Howard on two occasions in a broom closet in a section of the prison known as C-Walk.

In the affidavit, investigator Peter Herring recounts how he later reviewed prison camera footage from around the times of the alleged sex acts.

In both instances, the document states, the female prisoner is seen following Howard toward an upstairs day room where the C-Walk broom closet is located. In both instances, the pair return less than an hour later and Howard enters an officer's bathroom.

The affidavit is dated April 17 when charges against Howard were first filed. Works is not implicated in that document. In fact, one of the prisoners interviewed is quoted as saying she believed Works may have known about Howard's indiscretions but that "he was not OK with it."

Works was indicted last week after prison officials presented their case against him to a grand jury in Cumberland County. The documents associated with that case have not been made available.

Prison officials have not said whether Works is accused of being sexually involved with the same inmates as Howard, although they have commented that the cases are connected.

Works resigned his position last week.

By Maine law, consensual sex between prison guards and inmates is considered gross sexual assault because guards have supervisory authority over the prisoners.