AUBURN – A well-known former Little League and youth basketball coach pleaded innocent Tuesday to seven counts of rape.

Michael Johnson, 48, dressed in a black sweatshirt and blue jeans, clasped his hands behind his back and stood quietly as the Androscoggin County Superior Court judge read the charges. He said only “yes, sir” when asked if he understood the charges and “not guilty” when asked for his plea.

The charges are the result of allegations made by three women, who claim that Johnson sexually abused them in the late 1980s.

At the time, each of the girls was under 14 years old.

One of them met Johnson at the YMCA in Auburn where he worked as volunteer coach and served as the head of a leadership group for young teens. This girl introduced him to the others.

“We started doing things with him outside of the leadership program,” one of the alleged victims said in an interview earlier this month. “He would give us alcohol and drugs, and seduce us one by one.”

The three women who have brought charges against Johnson are now in their late 20s and early 30s. Two live out of state, and one still lives in the area.

The women, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, have described Johnson as charming and charismatic.

They said he invited them to his apartment in Auburn, got them drunk and high, and made them feel special by talking badly about their parents and other adults in their lives.

“He made it feel like it was us against the world,” said one of them. “I really thought he cared about us on some level.”

“He made us feel that we were this special group of kids,” said another.

Each woman described how Johnson propositioned her. None of them realized that he was doing the same thing with the others, they said.

“There was an oath of silence,” one alleged victim said. “He’d say, ‘You know that you can’t share this with anyone.'”

The woman recalled that they stopped hanging out with Johnson after about a year. They stayed quiet until 1993, when two of them went to police after hearing rumors that he was still hanging around young girls.

They were told at the time that the statute of limitations had run out, and there was nothing that police could do.

Auburn Police Detective Mitchell Sweetser said the detective who spoke with the girls more than 10 years ago didn’t have a clear understanding of the law.

Under Maine law, an adult who sexually abuses someone under 14 can be charged with rape, even if the sex was consensual, and the state has no statute of limitations for sex charges involving victims who are 16 or younger.

Johnson’s alleged victims didn’t learn this, however, until one of them called police last year, after spotting Johnson in Portland.

“I want to see justice done to him. He really damaged a lot of lives,” she said.

The women claim they are not Johnson’s only victims. Others, they said, are not ready to come forward.

“For the past 16 years, I knew something bad happened. But I always thought that I had done something. I got over that over the years,” one woman said. “I got older and I knew that obviously he was wrong. He should not have been having sex with children. He was the adult.”

On Tuesday, the judge set Johnson’s bail at $10,000, with the condition that he have no contact with girls under 18 years old.

Each of the seven charges carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.

ltice@sunjournal.com

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