AUBURN — A former substitute teacher at Leavitt Area High School in Turner will spend a year in jail for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old
student. 

Seth Prideaux, 22, of Lewiston, pleaded guilty last week to one count of
gross sexual assault. On Tuesday, an Androscoggin County Superior Court
justice sentenced him to four years in prison, with all but one year suspended
and four years of probation. Prideaux must also attend sex-offender counseling,
register as a sex offender for 10 years and avoid contact with girls under age 18.
The sentence was based on a plea agreement.

Before sentencing Tuesday, the student’s mother told the court that her daughter was an innocent teenager who had just turned 15 and hadn’t had a boyfriend and didn’t even date
before Prideaux pursued her. 

“The truth of the matter is, she was groomed and manipulated into thinking he cared for her,” the mother said.

She said her daughter has been distant and suffering from mood swings since the incidents.

Although family members wanted a stiffer sentence for Prideaux, the girl’s mother said, they accepted the plea agreement for her daughter’s sake.

“We did not want her to experience the brutal reality of a trial,” she said. 

Prideaux’s lawyer, Allan Lobozzo, said his client didn’t want the girl to go through the trauma of testifying, either. 

“The one thing he could save the girl from, give back to the girl, is not going to trial,” Lobozzo said after sentencing. 

Prideaux didn’t speak, but he did submit a written
statement to the court and to the girl’s family expressing his remorse.

“I am truly sorry; it was an egregious and terrible lapse in judgment and hopefully my year in prison will serve as adequate punishment,” he wrote. “I abused my position of authority and what I thought was love was in fact a selfish, execrable, and immoral act guised as intimacy.” 

Prideaux was indicted by a grand jury on three counts of gross
sexual assault and one count of furnishing liquor to a minor, stemming from an
incident in January when police were called to his home. They found the parents of the
15-year-old student yelling in Prideaux’s driveway. The girl’s father told police she had admitted to having sex with Prideaux. Police say Prideaux told them
he had sex with the girl three times during the two previous days.

Prideaux taught French as a long-term substitute at SAD 52, which includes
Greene, Leeds and Turner. 

ltice@sunjournal.com

Seth Prideaux appears in Androscoggin Superior Court Tuesday morning where he was sentenced to spend a year in prison for sexually assaulting a 15 year old student of his.

Seth Prideaux, left, listens to his lawyer, Allan Lobozzo, in Androscoggin Superior Court Tuesday morning. He will spend a year in jail and required to register as a sex offender for being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old student.

Superior Court Justice Donald Marden listens to the mother of the victim of Seth Prideaux speak in Androscoggin Superior Court in Auburn during the sentencing of Prideaux who was convicted of sexually assaulting a student while he was a teacher at Leavitt Area High School in Turner.