Auburn lawyer Seth Carey waits for the media to show up Monday afternoon for a press conference on the steps of the Androscoggin County Building in Auburn. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)
District attorney candidate Seth Carey “named and vilified” on social media the woman who obtained a protective order to keep him away from her, according to a prepared statement from her lawyer.
Nicole Bissonnette, staff attorney for Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Lewiston, said her client “never sought to bring media attention to this matter, but felt it was necessary to respond to the spurious accusations made against her” by Carey in a Rumford court hearing and at a news conference in Auburn this week.
During the news conference, Carey did not name the woman, whose identity is being withheld, but he named her on social media posts last week. Paperwork he displayed on the courthouse steps in Auburn also contained her name.
Carey, 42, is a Republican running for district attorney for Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties. He faces a June 12 primary against Lewiston lawyer Alexander Willette, 29.
The Maine GOP has called on Carey to step down in the face of “actual, credible accusations” that a Rumford judge found credible after an hours-long hearing on the woman’s request for a protective order.
The winner of the primary will take on the current district attorney, Democrat Andrew Robinson, in the November general election.
Bissonnette said in a statement she released that the woman who accused Carey of sexual abuse was “was not in a relationship with Mr. Carey during the time in question, when she was a tenant in his home” in Rumford.
“The parties never shared a bedroom nor engaged in any consensual relationship while they were roommates,” she said, an assessment that Carey also has endorsed.
The woman said she had to put a padlock on her bedroom door to keep him away, however, and accused him of sexually assaulting her in the living room of the house Carey owned. Carey has strongly denied any misconduct.
The judge, who heard both of them testify in regard to her request for a protective order, later ruled that Carey posed a credible threat to her safety and granted the order.
The judge allowed her to stay in Carey’s house until May 1 while she looks for another place. Carey is barred from going there during that time.
The woman “wants to get away” from her accuser, Bissonnette said, and “is working to heal from this experience with the loving support of her family and friends.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
