Owls Head man sentenced for harrassing teenage girls on Facebook

Sun, 10/11/2015 - 8:30pm

    ROCKLAND – An Owls Head man was sentenced to serve four months in jail after he pleaded guilty to harassing and threatening 15 teenage girls on facebook.

    Sumner P. Sweet, 39, of Owls Head, was sentenced Oct. 2 in Knox County Unified Court by Judge Susan Sparaco to 364 days in jail with all but four months suspended on 15 counts of harassment by electronic communications, a Class E offense. Sweet will also serve a year on administrative release and is required to receive psychological counseling, according to court documents.

    The teenage girls who were harassed by Sweet on facebook are currently students at Medomak Valley High School. Chris Spear, Resource Police Officer at Medomak Valley High School and Middle School, had received several complaints from both the students and their parents about Sweet, according to the court report filed by Detective Justin Twitchell, the sexual assault investigator for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. 

    The students told police that they did not know Sweet but he was adding them as friends on his facebook account.  

    According to Twitchell’s report, Sweet told some of the students that he knew where they lived and if they did not reply to his message “they would regret it.” The detective said in his report that with Sweet’s history, he feared his actions would escalate and cause him to commit another sexual offense.

    The Knox County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant to retrieve records from Sweet’s facebook account. They discovered he had been reaching out to young girls and women from all over the country, trying to engage in conversations with them. The conversations would ultimately end up becoming sexual in nature, according to the court document.

    In 2010, police investigated Sweet’s actions when he was suspected of contacting young students at the Georges Valley High School on facebook. Police charged him with failing to comply with the Maine sex offender registration act. 

    Sweet was also convicted of gross sexual assault in 1996, according to the court report. 

    Sarah Shepherd can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com