A former Topsham school resource officer charged with sexually touching a student pleaded guilty to a simple assault charge Monday and will serve a week in jail.
Randy T. Cook, 47, of Brunswick pleaded guilty in a negotiated deal in which prosecutors agreed to drop the unlawful sexual touching charge.
Former Topsham School Resource Officer Randy Cook sits in his office at Mt. Ararat High School in 2018. The former officer pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor involving a student in 2020. Darcie Moore / The Times Record file
The victim, who was not named, was 17 when the offense happened in December 2020, according to court records, which contained no further details of what occurred.
Topsham Police Chief Marc Hagan said he received an earlier complaint about Cook’s behavior, on Nov. 6, 2020. After a meeting with Cook, Hagan placed him on paid administrative leave and started an internal investigation. Cook resigned a few days later.
Cook was hired as a police office in Topsham in April 2003, and had been the school resource officer at Mt. Ararat High School for nearly five years.
“Although I have greatly enjoyed working with you and the town, I have decided that for personal reasons, the time is right for me to pursue a career outside of law enforcement,” Cook wrote in his resignation letter.
Cook has since agreed to a voluntary surrender of his license to be a police officer, according to the office of Cumberland County District Attorney Jonathan Sahrbeck. Neither Sahrbeck’s office nor Cook’s attorney could provide a record of the surrender Tuesday.
Topsham is in Sagadahoc County, but Topsham police and Natasha Irving, the district attorney for Waldo, Knox, Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties, requested that an outside agency, the Maine State Police, investigate the case and that a different district attorney’s office handle the prosecution because of Cook’s nearly 20-year history as an officer in the county.
Cook’s conviction this week was first publicized by Sahrbeck’s office in a news release Tuesday that said Cook would serve his sentence at the Cumberland County Jail. Yet public records of Cook’s guilty plea, a form known as a judgment and commitment, had been removed from the court file, and clerks at the court said the public records had been sealed by a judge.
Court files often contain confidential information that is withheld from people who review the records at a courthouse. But plea forms in adult criminal cases are public records, and court proceedings are presumed open to the public unless ordered closed by a judge.
After a Portland Press Herald reporter questioned why the documents were withheld, a second judge, Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy, ordered the case be unsealed, with the agreement of prosecutors and the defense.
Cook’s defense attorney, Jonathan Goodman, filed the motion to seal the case on Nov. 29, 2021, and active-retired Justice Paul A. Fritzche approved it. Neither Goodman nor Sahrbeck returned messages seeking an interview.
CONCERN ABOUT INCARCERATION
In asking that the records be sealed, Goodman argued that no matter where the former police and corrections officer served his time, he was was likely to encounter people with whom he’d had “difficult dealings” in the past. He asked that information about where Cook would be incarcerated be kept secret until 30 days after he completed his sentence.
“Mr. Cook is concerned that some inmates who had difficult dealings with Mr. Cook in his law enforcement or corrections roles may perceive those difficulties as Mr. Cook’s fault, and they might see Mr. Cook’s incarceration with them as an opportunity to retaliate,” Goodman wrote. “Mr. Cook believes his safety will be least compromised if only the state and the facility to which he is assigned to serve his sentence are aware of the dates and location that he will serve his sentence. Making this information available to the public sooner will serve no benefit to the public and will only serve to put Mr. Cook’s personal safety at risk unnecessarily.”
The assistant district attorney assigned to the case, Nicole Albert, consented to the motion to seal the documents, and the judge approved the sealing two days later.
The plea hearing on Monday was held in open court, but no member of the public attended, said Caitlin Kellner, clerk at the Cumberland County Unified Court. Sahrbeck’s office said the victim and her family testified before Cook was sentenced.
“Coming forward and participating in an investigation is never easy, and when dealing with a perpetrator who is in a position of authority, it can be especially difficult,” Sahrbeck said in a statement. “I am proud of the victim and her family for having the strength to move forward with the investigation and prosecution of this case in order to hold the defendant accountable for his actions. My hope is that this prosecution will be able to provide some closure to the victim and her family.”
Times Record Staff Writer Payal Gangishetti contributed to this report.
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