PARIS — Testimony began Monday in the trial of a man charged with sexually assaulting a woman the state says is mentally impaired.

Jeffrey Hedrick, 52, is charged with engaging in sexual conduct with a woman diagnosed with mild mental retardation, according to Assistant District Attorney Joseph O’Connor. Hedrick faces 12 counts of gross sexual assault in Oxford County Superior Court.

O’Connor said the defendant suffers from a mental disability that was readily apparent and known to the defendant, who had known her for more than 10 years.

Hedrick’s attorney, Sarah Glynn, doesn’t contest that Hedrick engaged in sexual activity with the woman, while he was married to his now ex-wife. According to Glynn, the woman’s mental impairment is overstated.

Glynn said the woman in question “is an adult woman. Jeff is an adult male.” Glynn characterized the alleged victim as a person who has held jobs and who enjoys crossword puzzles.

The woman has lived in the care of guardians since she was a teenager, when she was removed from her family home. O’Connor said there were allegations she was sexually abused by her biological father before she was taken from the home. She received Social Security benefits due to her mental impairments and her partial blindness.

Two mental health workers who had met the woman testified that she was mentally impaired Monday.

Joanne Cookson, an adult protective caseworker for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, testified that the woman “didn’t have any ability to manage her own affairs.”

A year ago, the woman had attempted to become free from needing a guardian, but Cookson was against it. “There’s a lot of things (she) doesn’t understand,” Cookson told the court during Glynn’s cross-examination. The woman remains in the care of DHHS.

Susan Lidstone, a psychiatric nurse practitioner who diagnosed the woman, said she found mild retardation, with a full-scale IQ of 57. She said the woman overestimated her mental abilities.

“It was obvious that she did not understand all the questions given to her,” Lidstone said of her meetings with the alleged victim.

Hedrick’s ex-wife, Lee Hedrick, testified that both her ex-husband and the woman told her that Hedrick had been having the woman perform sex acts on him. Lee Hedrick, who divorced Jeff Hedrick about a year ago, said she and her ex-husband knew the woman was mentally impaired.

She said she had tried to teach the woman skills like making change and balancing a checkbook, but found she couldn’t grasp the concepts.

Lee said Jeff told her he had been engaging in sexual acts with the woman for a year or two, but when the alleged victim testified about what happened, she said it had happened since she was 17, and that Jeff had forced himself on her. She said she tried to tell people for years but no one would listen to her.

Lee said she was very angry when she learned what happened. She said her ex-husband told her that the woman “came on” to him, exposing herself.

Lidstone said the woman had exhibited sexually-impulsive behaviors, including inappropriate behavior at jobs and in the home where she was staying, as part of a non-specific impulse-control disorder, but couldn’t make decisions for herself.

Jeff Hedrick was living in Hartford at the time of the sexual contact, but was listed as living in Poland earlier this year in his divorce notice. The trial will resume Tuesday at 9 a.m.

treaves@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link