PORTLAND — A Sabattus woman convicted of aiding her husband’s sexual abuse of a preteen is asking the state’s highest court to throw out the conviction on the grounds the jury was not allowed to consider her tormented past. 

Attorney George Hess, representing Christal Gagnier, 28, told justices of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday that a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband produced a climate of fear that rendered his client incapable of helping the young victim. 

In June 2014, Gagnier was sentenced to three years in prison for tampering with a witness. Prosecutors said she gave the victim an antibiotic intended to treat chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease, to hide evidence of repeated sexual assaults on the underage girl.

Gagnier also was given concurrent sentences for aggravated unlawful furnishing of scheduled drugs and for endangering the welfare of a child. 

Christal’s husband, Michael Gagnier, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in January to 12 counts of sexual assault.  

Hess argued that a lower court erred when it declined a motion to tell jurors they could consider Gagnier was compelled to act under threat of imminent violence.

The victim, now 15, was 10 years old when the abuse began. It continued for three years. In 2012, the victim told a friend that Michael Gagnier raped her but later recanted under threat of violence, according to prosecutors. A year later, the victim told the same friend again that she had been raped. The friend eventually told a church youth camp worker. 

According to Hess, Christal Gagnier also was a victim of Michael Gagnier. In the most “horrific” case of domestic abuse he’d seen in more than 30 years as an attorney, Hess said Christal Gagnier was abused from the age of 12 when she began dating Michael Gagnier.

Hess said Christal Gagnier was financially and emotionally bound to Michael Gagnier who at the same time was dating her mother. When Christal Gagnier became an adult, she married him, at which point Michael Gagnier controlled her in almost every way, Hess said. 

In a potentially precedent-setting case that justices hinted could shape the court’s view on issues of domestic violence abuse, the seven-member court seemed primarily occupied with one question: Can a victim of a long history of domestic violence claim she was coerced to break the law even though no direct threat was made against her? 

The difficulty in accepting Hess’s argument, Chief Justice Leigh Saufley said, was that to find a defendant not guilty because she was coerced into her criminal act, the victim has to be facing an immediate threat. She invited Hess to address whether the definition of “imminent” has to be updated in the context of a cycle of domestic violence. 

“The law struggles to keep up with our growing knowledge of the dynamics of this kind of circumstance,” Saufley said.

Hess argued that “imminent” shouldn’t be viewed narrowly but as the influence a perpetrator can have on a victim. 

Justice Donald Alexander interrupted Hess, saying if his arguments were accepted it would radically change the interpretation of the word “imminent” and potentially “blow the doors off” the law.

“You want to change the duress law to say, ‘As long as you’re in fear someone can do something to you sometime, that’s enough to claim duress?'” Alexander asked.

Androscoggin County Assistant District Attorney Lisa Bogue said even though the woman had been abused for years, the lower court did its job in instructing the jury not to consider a duress defense.

Alexander said the court reviews many appeals every year in which there is a generational cycle of abuse but never one in which the person convicted has also been abused.

Bogue said Gagnier never filed charges against her husband, never told police or social workers during the investigation that she was abused and prosecutors only learned of it when she testified at trial. 

Bogue said Michael Gagnier was in jail and therefore unable to directly intimidate Christal Gagnier when she instructed the victim not to tell a case worker about her abuse that occurred before they moved to Maine.

“I don’t think being a victim gives her a pass to make someone else a victim,” Bogue said. 

When it became clear the victim had chlamydia, Bogue said on only one occasion did Michael Gagnier tell his wife not to get medical help. Although Christal Gagnier felt she had no choice, Bogue said she never testified about being specifically threatened. 

Bogue said while a history of victimization can cause a person to believe they’re constantly in harm’s way, this case was different. 

“Where would the line be?” she asked. “If I’m scared and they bully me, that doesn’t give me a right to go out, victimize and hurt somebody else.” 

ccrosby@sunmediagroup.net 

Copy the Story Link