AUBURN — A 17-year-old girl who testified that for years she was hypnotized after being sexually assaulted watched fixedly Tuesday as her assailant was found guilty on seven related charges.

Aaron Patton, 37, of Jay, who played minor roles in several major motion pictures and on TV, was convicted by a jury of four men and eight women in Androscoggin County Superior Court after more than three hours of deliberation.

He was found guilty on four counts of gross sexual assault, each count punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He also was convicted of unlawful sexual contact and two counts of sexual abuse of a minor, each charge punishable by up to five years in prison.

Patton was arrested Monday at the end of court proceedings and charged with seven additional sex crimes, according to Androscoggin County Jail records.

Those were one gross sexual assault charge, two sexual abuse of a minor charges and four unlawful sexual contact charges. Further details of those charges were unavailable early Wednesday.

Patton posted an additional $3,000 cash for bail Tuesday after his conviction; he had already posted $2,000, bringing the total to $5,000. No date was set for sentencing.

Patton, who said he was a certified clinical hypnotherapist, claimed the girl he was on trial for abusing was 16 when he started having sex with her at his apartment in Jay.

But the jury apparently believed the teen, who said Patton began grooming her at an early age for sexual abuse. When she was 12, she began hypnotism treatments with him to help break a fingernail-biting habit. Patton began touching her breasts and private parts, she said. His advances escalated two years later when he took her into a bedroom and had sex with her in front of a mirror so they could watch, she testified.

The two were soon having sex about once a week, including anal and oral sex, she said. After each sexual encounter, he would hypnotize her in an effort to make her feel more comfortable about their trysts, she said.

Patton testified early Tuesday that he had sex with the girl, but that she was 16 at the time. Under Maine law, that is not a crime as long as he wasn’t responsible for her care, Patton’s attorney, Henry Griffin, told the jury shortly before it began to deliberate. Griffin also suggested that the accusation was a ploy conceived by the girl’s mother and carried out by the girl to serve the mother’s ulterior purposes.

After the verdicts, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Worden said: “The jury did its job, what it was instructed to do. Most importantly, the jurors held the defendant accountable. I think that speaks to justice.”

In his closing argument to the jury, Worden talked about the girl’s testimony and why jurors should believe her version of events over Patton’s.

He said she gave her account with “vivid clarity.” When she described her first sexual encounter with Patton, “you saw her wince.”

During his cross-examination of Patton, Worden asked whether a sexual relationship with a girl 20 years younger was inappropriate. Patton said it wasn’t. Worden said Patton had kept the relationship secret because he knew it was wrong.

While under oath, Patton said he had earned nothing from his screenwriting and had earned, at most, $3,000 a year for acting, which took him away from his Maine home from time to time.

Asked about his ability to hypnotize, Patton said he uses it to help his clients with behavior modification, not mind control.

When police searched Patton’s apartment, they found lingerie he had bought for the girl, along with sex aids and a copy of “Sex and Hypnosis.”

To see Aaron Patton’s acting bio, go to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1722686/bio.