A judge agreed to place a $1.25 million attachment on properties of a former prominent Rockport attorney who is accused in a civil lawsuit of sexually assaulting a client.
Justice Daniel Billings signed an ex parte order on May 15 to place liens of $1.25 million on properties and bank accounts for Dana F. Strout. The judge ruled that the woman was more likely than not to win a judgment against Strout and that if he was made aware of the lien request in advance he could try to conceal his assets.
Strout vehemently denied the allegations when reached by telephone Friday.
“I’m devastated by this,” Strout said. “This is a complete fabrication.”
He said the woman made the claims against him after he represented her in a civil case and owed him nearly $60,000.
“This is a nightmare for me. There goes everything I have done in my life, including my reputation,” he said.
Strout said he has hired an attorney and will fight the claims.
Strout had practiced law for decades in the Midcoast. In June 2021, Justice Ann Murray issued an order accepting the surrender of Strout’s license to practice law in Maine. That order came while Strout was under investigation into allegations of misconduct, the June 2021 court order stated.
Strout said on Friday that he did not fight the claims made in 2021 by the woman now suing him because he had suffered a heart attack and didn’t want the additional stress.
Strout graduated from the University of Colorado Law School in 1974. He was admitted to the Maine Bar in 1996.
The woman filed a lawsuit against Strout in May 2023 alleging that he sexually assaulted her. She had hired him to represent her in a civil case in October 2019.
The Portland Press Herald does not name victims of alleged sex abuse without their consent.
The woman states in the lawsuit that when she met with Strout in his law office on West Street in Rockport that he showed her a room adjoining his office. That room had sex toys and he told her “Someday I’ll take you in there and put a smile on your face.”
Strout then took her back to his office and sexually assaulted her, the lawsuit alleges.
The woman was hospitalized for two weeks and during her hospital stay Strout called her and “made sexually explicit, offensively coarse and obscene comments, requests, suggestions and/or proposals,” the lawsuit further alleges.
Between December 2019 and February 2020, Strout would send text messages, photos and videos to the woman that were sexually explicit.
On two occasions Strout called the woman and made obscene suggestions while she was in the presence of a third party who heard Strout’s comments, the woman alleges in the lawsuit.
In one conversation, he told the woman he would take $1,000 off her bill each time she performed a certain sex act on him, the lawsuit alleges.
The woman obtained a different attorney and reported Strout’s actions to her attorney, the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, four health care professionals and three licensed social workers, the lawsuit states.
Strout has handled high-profile cases over the years, including helping the district attorney’s office obtain a conviction against a contractor who bilked customers.
The woman is represented by attorney Richard Elliott of Boothbay Harbor.
No criminal charges have been filed against Strout.
The lawsuit was filed in Lincoln County Superior Court in Wiscasset because the woman who filed the lawsuit lives in that county.
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