AUBURN – Doug Lane, a convicted sex offender and former Lewiston mayoral candidate who once faked his own suicide, is expected to be freed from jail within weeks.
Mike Simoneau, Lane’s probation officer, agreed to a court-approved plan aimed at finding Lane a place to live when a five-month sentence for probation violations expires in about three weeks.
Justice Ellen Gorman sanctioned the plan during a brief hearing at Androscoggin County Superior Court Wednesday morning.
Lane, 45, was convicted in 1999 on two counts of gross sexual assault. Police said Lane had a three-year sexual relationship with a Lewiston boy who was then 14.
Just before he was sentenced for the rapes, Lane vanished. He left a suicide note at the office of James Howaniec, who was Lane’s lawyer at the time. George Hess represented Lane at Wednesday’s hearing.
Lane was eventually found and captured by police in downtown Boston nearly seven months after fleeing the area. He fought extradition, eventually lost his arguments and was returned to Maine to face sentencing.
He was ordered to spend eight years in prison, but five of those years were suspended. Simoneau said Lane actually served three years and 182 days in prison or jail on the two gross sexual assault charges.
On Wednesday, Simoneau explained that Lane had violated terms of his probation for the rape convictions this past July. The violations resulted when he didn’t follow court recommendations dealing with counseling, where he was living, and harassment threats made against another person. Lane has been held at the Androscoggin County Jail since.
Simoneau, Hess and others are working to find Lane a place to live once he’s released from jail later this month or early in December.
Lane unsuccessfully sought election to nearly a half-dozen political positions, including the Maine House of Representatives. He ran for mayor in Lewiston in 1991.
Simoneau said Lane will have to register as a sex offender upon his release from jail.
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