RUMFORD – The head varsity baseball coach at SAD 21’s Dirigo High School, who is also an educator at the Dixfield school, was arrested on Friday afternoon by Rumford police and charged with sexually assaulting a teenage student in Rumford over the last year.

At 4 p.m., Rumford Detective Lt. Mark Cayer charged Donald L. Hebert, 33, of Route 120 in Rumford, with gross sexual assault, a Class C felony.

Hebert was released on $800 cash bail and will be arraigned at 8 a.m. on Jan. 24 in Oxford County Superior Court in Paris.

Cayer said Rumford police began investigating Hebert after they received a call on Sept. 7 that Hebert had allegedly engaged in a sexual relationship in Rumford with a student under the age of 18.

According to the Mountain Valley High School Web site, Hebert was also the 2006-07 junior varsity girls basketball coach at the Rumford school in SAD 43.

“We believe the violations occurred throughout the past year,” Cayer said in a telephone interview late Friday night. “We are confident in the evidence we have and believe we have a strong case.”

Cayer declined to identify the evidence or state at which school districts Hebert is or has been employed. But he did say that Rumford police and the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Task Force executed two search warrants at Hebert’s house on Friday afternoon.

“We seized a significant amount of evidence, but I’m not identifying the evidence. He has no priors.

The rest of the facts will come out in court proceedings. This is involving students, so I want to be careful. We’ve had very good cooperation from the school systems involved and, at this point, we don’t feel that any other students are in jeopardy,” Cayer said.

In a telephone interview late Friday night, SAD 21 Superintendent Thomas Ward of Temple said Hebert has been the head varsity baseball coach at Dirigo High School in Dixfield for several years. He previously had coached basketball at the school.

“He’s a very likable person,” Ward said. He also said Hebert has been an educational technician in Dirigo’s alternative education program for the last two years.

“It’s an unfortunate situation all the way around, and we’re fully cooperating with the Rumford Police Department. Our hands are tied about what information we can release,” Ward said.

He did add that Rumford police confiscated Hebert’s laptop computer at the Dixfield high school.

Ward said he learned about Hebert’s arrest from DHS Principal Daniel Hart of Bethel, whom Cayer contacted to inform of the investigation and arrest.

Hart, contacted Friday night, deferred comment to Ward.