AUBURN — A Lewiston man has been sentenced to serve 45 days in county jail for repeatedly trespassing on Sexual Assault Crisis Center property.

Kelly Leach, 47, was charged with trespassing on the property in August 2011 after police found a thumb drive he left on a desk in the administrative office space.

According to Assistant District Attorney Andrew Matulis, Leach had been dating a SACC employee and had entered the offices without that employee’s knowledge after the staff had gone home.

In February 2012, Leach pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor criminal trespass charge and entered a deferred disposition agreement with the court. Under that agreement, if Leach served 100 hours of community service and sought counseling by February 2013, his sentence would have been capped at 14 days.

However, according to Matulis, Leach did not do any community service or offer proof that he had any counseling at all. As a result, Matulis asked the court to sentence Leach to 180 days in jail, the maximum allowed for a Class E misdemeanor.

In explaining the facts of the case to Active-Retired Justice Robert Clifford, Matulis said that SACC employees started sensing that someone was breaking into the office after hours some months before Leach was charged. When some employees arrived in the morning, they would smell cigarette smoke and notice small things had been moved around.

The agency changed the locks on the doors, installed a silent alarm and made other security upgrades, but the break-ins continued.

“The employees were frightened to be at the center after 5 p.m. because they didn’t know when who might come in,” Matulis said.

When Leach was identified through the computer thumb drive he left behind, he admitted to police that he entered the office six or seven times to use the Internet. The employee he was dating was not aware he was doing that.

Marty McIntyre, executive director of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Services, testified that she and her staff “try to create an environment of safety” for their clients. Leach, she said, “made us feel terribly unsafe and it was hard to make” clients feel safe in that environment.

“Nobody wanted to be the first person in in the morning,” or the last person working at night, she said, because they worried someone might be in the building.

Lewiston attorney Nicholas Worden, who represents Leach, said Leach suffers from mental illness and has no prior criminal history. He asked that, based on those factors, that the court impose no more than 20 days in jail.

In addressing the court, Leach said “I wish that I had completed my deferred disposition, but I didn’t and it doesn’t matter why.” He said he was prepared to be sentenced and to “stop wasting the court’s time.”

Matulis took that opportunity to argue again for the six-month sentence, saying that Leach had been given a chance to get a lesser sentence but “rejected his community service and rejected his counseling” and, therefore lost his chance for leniency.

Clifford agreed that Leach didn’t take advantage of the opportunity given him, noting that “why” Leach didn’t complete the requirements of his deferred disposition certainly did matter. He said a 45-day sentence was appropriate punishment for what was a “serious invasion of privacy and serious noncompliance with your deferred disposition.”

Leach was handcuffed before he left the courtroom and will serve the sentence in the Androscoggin County Jail.

jmeyer@sunjournal.com