Ex-Agency of Education worker admits to sexual assault on a minor

A Berlin man charged six years in the past with sexually assaulting a minor has reached a plea deal. The query now could be what precisely the sentence will probably be. 

Perry Thompson, 48, had been arrested in 2015 on the state Agency of Education’s central workplace, the place he labored on the time as an administrative assistant to the company secretary and to the State Board of Education. 

Though Thompson was arrested on the state’s company central workplace, the allegation didn’t relate to his work there. 

Thompson pleaded responsible Wednesday in Orange County Superior felony court docket in Chelsea throughout a listening to held through video to sexual assault on a minor and lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor that dates again to 2013. 

The plea deal permits the prosecutor to ask for a sentence of up to 10 to 25 years in jail. His lawyer will probably be ready to argue for any lesser sentence. 

Thompson had been going through a cost of aggravated sexual assault of a baby, which carried a penalty of 25 years to life in jail.

On Wednesday, Judge Thomas Zonay ordered a presentence investigation by the state Department of Corrections, together with a psycho-sexual analysis, earlier than Thompson’s sentencing listening to.

Zonay mentioned he’ll resolve at the moment whether or not he’ll settle for the plea deal reached by the attorneys within the case. If he doesn’t, the choose informed Thompson, he may then withdraw his responsible pleas.

Orange County State’s Attorney Dickson Corbett mentioned after Wednesday’s listening to that the sufferer supported the plea settlement.

“I hope that they find justice at the end of this,” Dickson mentioned. 

Thompson’s case has been working its approach via the authorized system for years, and in that point a number of totally different legal professionals have represented him. 

In October 2018, Thompson went on trial, and shortly after it started, he reached a plea deal. However, Thompson’s plea was later withdrawn when it was decided he had not been made conscious that he may have obtained a life sentence, based mostly on the cost to which he had pleaded responsible, in accordance to David Sleigh, Thompson’s present lawyer. He was not concerned within the case at the moment. 

Court filings said that a teenager had come ahead in 2015, making the allegations in opposition to Thompson to investigators with the Department for Children and Families. Thompson was arrested days later and positioned on go away from his job on the Agency of Education. He now not works there.

The teenager informed authorities that Thompson first sexually assaulted him when he was 13 years previous. VTDigger reported in 2015, when Thompson was arrested, that affidavits and interviews with him and {the teenager} said that in 2013 Thompson took the minor with him for an in a single day work-related journey to Stowe. At that point, in accordance to the affidavit, Thompson was an worker of the Vermont State Employees Credit Union. 

Thompson informed investigators he was later fired, VTDigger reported, as a result of his boss obtained indignant that he had taken somebody who was not a relative with him on the journey with out getting permission.

Court papers additionally state that the Orange County Special Investigations Unit had interviewed {the teenager} in 2013 throughout an investigation into Facebook messages between Thompson and {the teenager}. The messages included references to intercourse and medicines.

At that point, {the teenager} informed investigators he had not been sexually assaulted, court docket information said. VTDigger reported that, in 2015, {the teenager} informed investigators he had not informed them in regards to the sexual assaults two years earlier as a result of Thompson had given him marijuana and cigarettes.

Thompson is presently free, with situations governing his launch. 

Ted Fisher, a spokesperson for the Agency of Education, declined remark on the case when reached Wednesday.