PARIS — The Oxford County Superior Court jury is still out in the trial of a Rumford man accused of sexually assaulting a minor.

After nearly two hours of deliberation, Justice Robert Clifford sent jurors home at about 5 p.m. Tuesday. It was the sixth day of the trial of James V. Cole Jr., 32, of Rumford, who in January 2008 was accused of a series of 11 sexual assaults dating back to 2003.

The alleged victim was 10 years old when Cole began assaulting her, she said. She came forward to police in 2008.

Cole is charged with 11 incidents the girl said she remembers best, but she said there were dozens of sexual assaults in those years.

According to the District Attorney’s Office, several of the alleged assault charges are statutory, meaning they happened before the girl turned 14. In other charges, the state alleges, the girl was compelled to have sex with Cole.

Testimony ended Monday. On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Richard Beauchesne and defense lawyer Leonard Sharon gave their closing arguments.

Beauchesne spoke about how the girl recalled the alleged incidents, each with a detail that made them stand out. In one, she said, he hugged her wordlessly afterward for three to five minutes. Beauchesne told jurors to consider how those details add credibility to her story.

He said the even delivery of her testimony on the first day of the trial was consistent with her statement that she emotionally detached herself from the assaults, as though they were happening to someone else.

He went back over DNA evidence, including a blanket found in a storage locker. The blanket had sperm calls that closely matched Cole’s DNA and DNA that matched the girl’s.

Cole said he and his ex-wife had slept on the blanket, but Beauchesne said none of his ex-wife’s DNA was found on the blanket; only Cole’s and the girl’s.

In Sharon’s rebuttal, he said the burden to prove a defendant guilty is on the state, because a defendant is presumed innocent. He accused investigators and the District Attorney’s Office of painting Cole as guilty from the beginning.

“If you paint someone as guilty, then everything they do becomes suspect,” he told jurors. He said the investigation by the Rumford Police Department followed that pattern, referring to Capt. Daniel Garbarini’s words to the alleged victim during her 2008 statement that he would help convict Cole.

Sharon criticized Theresa Calicchio, a DNA analyst for the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory who found a partial match for Cole’s DNA in sperm on the girl’s underwear and a strong match for his DNA on sperm on the blanket.

He said DNA information collected from a pair of the alleged victim’s underwear excluded his client. Beauchesne argued the evidence came from a partial DNA sample, and that the apparent inconsistency represented only the victim’s DNA.

Jurors will meet again at Oxford County Superior Court on Wednesday to continue deliberations.

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