AUBURN – A year and one month after Jeremy and Sarah Allen met their adopted son in a hotel lobby in Guatemala, they stood before a judge and pleaded innocent to charges that they beat and killed the boy.

The couple appeared in Androscoggin County Superior Court Friday afternoon while the body of their 22-month-old son, Nathaniel, lay in a morgue out of town.

Dressed in a linen suit and sandals, Sarah Allen spoke softly when she entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of manslaughter.

A 29-year-old hairdresser, she is accused of shaking her son to death on Feb. 14.

Her husband, a Navy journalist stationed at the Brunswick Naval Air Station, faces a less serious charge of assault.

Jeremy Allen, also 29, was away on business in New Hampshire when Nathaniel was rushed to the hospital with a swollen brain.

Although he hasn’t been implicated in the boy’s death, police say he hit the child with a spatula on the day before the shaking, leaving bruises on his upper thigh and buttocks.

Dressed in a stark white Navy uniform, Jeremy Allen also pleaded not guilty Friday.

Justice Ellen Gorman let him go without bail. As for Sarah Allen, Gorman agreed to lower her original bail of $25,000 cash to $10,000 cash.

As a condition of their release, both Sarah and Jeremy Allen are barred from having contact with children under 10 years old, unless the children are relatives and the parents are present at all times.

It will be several months before their cases go to trial.

‘Violent incident’

Jeremy and Sarah Allen adopted Nathaniel from Guatemala in April 2002. The adoption was arranged through a private, out-of-state agency.

On Feb. 14, Sarah Allen called police to report that the boy had fallen and was gasping for air.

Nathaniel was rushed to Midcoast Hospital in Brunswick, then to Maine Medical Center in Portland, where doctors determined that he was brain dead and would never live without life support.

The Allens decided to disconnect the boy from life-support machines on Feb. 15 and to donate his organs. Two weeks later, Sarah Allen was arrested at their home on Lincoln Street. Jeremy Allen was charged with assault after state prosecutors presented his case to an Androscoggin County grand jury.

According to court papers, an autopsy performed on the boy revealed three signs of shaken-baby syndrome: bleeding around the retina, bleeding around the brain and swelling of the brain.

“Nathaniel died from a very violent incident,” Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese said Friday.

Pre-existing condition

Sarah Allen says she never abused her son.

On Feb. 14, she said, she took the boy to Marden’s, then to Denny’s Restaurant for French toast, scrambled eggs and sausage. After breakfast, they stopped at the video store to rent “Stuart Little II” and “The Prince of Egypt.”

The boy was being fussy, Allen said, so when they got home she took his temperature because she thought he might have an ear infection.

She told police that Nathaniel fell several times during the night before collapsing for the last time at about 10 p.m.

Allen’s lawyer, Verne Paradie, has accused the state of rushing to arrest Allen without waiting for all of the information.

The Auburn defense lawyer is awaiting the results of a second autopsy in which samples of fluid from the boy’s brain were taken to be tested for infections and other brain disorders.

Paradie believes Nathaniel suffered from a pre-existing condition, such as meningitis or encephalitis, and that is what killed him.

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