RUMFORD – Sixteen years is a long time, especially for a purported miscarriage of justice.

That’s one reason why Bev and Bill Gallant of Rumford decided to start a local chapter of Trial and Error.

Trial and Error is a statewide group that, for 15 years, has been working to force a new trial for Dennis Dechaine.

He is serving a life sentence at Maine State Prison in Warren for the 1988 stabbing and strangulation of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry.

The Gallants believe Dechaine is innocent of the Bowdoin girl’s murder.

“Dennis has served 16 years in prison for something someone else did, and the real person just needs to be brought to justice,” Bev Gallant said Monday.

The Rumford woman has a personal connection to Dechaine. She has been friends for many years with Dechaine’s older brother Phil and his wife, Barb, of Sinclair in Aroostook County.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bev Gallant also worked in the St. John River Valley for Raymond Picard, a Catholic parish priest and a friend of the Dechaine family of Madawaska.

When police arrested and jailed Dennis Dechaine on July 8, 1988, Gallant said it was “a total shock.”

Intrigued, Gallant said she took time off from work, attending two days of Dechaine’s trial, which began on March 6, 1989, in Rockland.

“The trial was a fiasco. Dennis’ lawyer, Thomas Connelly, wasn’t able to object to anything or be able to defend Dennis at all,” she said.

After a jury found Dechaine guilty and Judge Carl Bradford sentenced him to life in prison on March 18, 1989, Gallant said she and her husband were tormented.

“We kept in touch with the family, but didn’t know how to help him. For 16 years, we’ve all wanted to help, but we didn’t know how until the book came out,” she said.

That book, “Human Sacrifice,” by James P. Moore, a retired U.S. Treasury agent, was published on Oct. 10, 2002.

But Gallant said she wasn’t aware of the book until July, when she and her husband visited Picard, who now lives in Newcastle. From his home, she ordered Moore’s book and others off the organization’s Web site at www.trialanderrordennis.org.

Later that day, Trial and Error member Morrison Bonpasse of Newcastle hand-delivered them to her. A discussion ensued and the Gallants volunteered to begin a Rumford chapter of the organization.

They conducted the chapter’s first meeting on Aug. 4 in their home at 37 Royal Ave., attracting seven people, including two from Livermore who have followed the case for 16 years.

The chapter’s next meeting is at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 1, at the Gallant home. Moore is scheduled to be there to discuss his book and a citizen-initiated petition that seeks a “complete, fair and independent investigation” of the Dechaine case.

As for Bev Gallant, she just wants her questions answered.

“Why was evidence destroyed before and after the trial? Why haven’t officials responded to the DNA results? Why isn’t the media pressing officials to do anything? I know the media can do that,” she said.