PORTLAND — Former schoolteacher and convicted sex offender James G. Raymond Jr. drove to New Hampshire with the intent of having sexual contact with two young girls who had been his students, a federal prosecutor said in court papers.

Raymond, 29, drove an 11-year-old girl and her younger sister from Auburn to Canobie Lake Park in Salem, N.H., and back to Maine twice during the summer in 2007. No other adult or student made either trip, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Wolff wrote in a motion filed in U.S. District Court.

A grand jury indicted the former Auburn music teacher in September on two counts of transporting a minor in interstate commerce with the intent of engaging in criminal sexual activity. He is confined to his Auburn apartment with an electronic monitoring bracelet, pending trial scheduled for March.

Details of Raymond’s alleged behavior were described by Wolff in court papers.

During the two trips to New Hampshire, Raymond touched the breasts and buttocks of the two girls, Wolff wrote in papers filed with the court.

Wolff wrote that he didn’t expect Raymond to dispute the allegation that he drove the two girls to New Hampshire, but would argue he didn’t intend to engage in criminal sexual activity. Evidence, including bank records and cell phone records help show his whereabouts on those dates, Wolff wrote.

A month before the August trips to Canobie Lake Park, chorus groups from Auburn visited the park on a field trip. Raymond and other teachers, along with students and chaperons, took a bus to and from the park. On the drive back, three students saw Raymond sitting in the back of the bus with the 11-year-old girl, identified in court papers as Jane Doe. One of the witnesses later told an Auburn police officer that Raymond was rubbing Doe’s leg and she had her head on his shoulder. That witness and another witness sitting near the back of the bus said to each other at the time that Raymond’s behavior was “weird.” The other witness told police that Raymond rubbed Doe’s “leg and butt area.”

In an interview with police, Doe said Raymond had told her to sit at the back of the bus with him. She said he rubbed her leg, and indicated to the officer it had been the mid-inner-thigh area. Raymond stopped after she asked him to, but later put his hand back on her leg and moved it toward her buttocks, she said. At a later interview, she told police Raymond touched her close to her breast and touched her “private area” over her shorts.

She told police that Raymond also put his hand inside her shirt and rubbed her belly. Doe said she didn’t tell her mother because “she was afraid her mother would make a big deal of it and call everyone.”

Federal agents knocked on Raymond’s door in September 2007 after learning that he had bought international child pornography memberships at Web sites in 2005 and 2006.

They said Raymond told them he had a “rough time” in 2005 and had struggled with his interest in child pornography. He said he had bought the membership in 2005, but realized a short time later that “what he was doing was wrong and went to his pastor for help.”

He told the agents he had wiped down his computer to erase any trace of the pictures. He bought photos the next year, thinking they were on an art Web site, but stopped viewing the pictures when he realized “its true nature.”

He said he had struggled with his problem and understood it was wrong and told the agents he didn’t have any sexual urges around his students.

In the fall of 2007, Auburn police interviewed Raymond about alleged sexual contact with a student. He was arrested for unlawful sexual touching. Later, other students came forward with similar allegations.

He was eventually convicted in Androscoggin County Superior Court in Auburn on two counts of unlawful sexual touching and three counts of assault.

Wolff’s motion seeks to allow at trial evidence to support the charge that Raymond intended to commit criminal sexual activity. Federal rules of evidence don’t allow prior convictions to reflect a defendant’s bad character or likelihood to commit a crime, but they do allow prior acts to show intent, among other things, Wolff wrote in his motion.

Raymond will “almost assuredly” claim at trial that his intentions were innocent in taking Doe and her younger sister to New Hampshire and that her claims of inappropriate sexual contact were mistaken or made up, Wolff wrote in his motion. But his actions toward her in front of witnesses on the earlier trip “powerfully refute such a defense.”

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