AUGUSTA — A city woman has been charged with two counts of unlawful sexual contact after she allegedly sexually assaulted a child who is younger than 12 years old last summer.
Jessica Lynn Dube, 36, was arrested Sunday night and had her initial court hearing Monday afternoon, appearing at the Capital Judicial Center on a video feed from the Kennebec County jail. Her bail was set at $1,000 unsecured, and she was released later in the day.
Unlawful sexual contact is a class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in jail and a $20,000 fine.
Police have accused Dube of sexually assaulting the child — to whom she is related — on two occasions last August, according to an affidavit written by then-Detective Tori Tracy, of the Augusta Police Department. Tracy is now a patrol sergeant.
Tracy first learned of the alleged assaults in November after a caseworker from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services referred the case to police. According to that referral, the child had mentioned the allegations in a conversation with a parent on Nov. 10.
The accusations originally were referred to state officials by Crisis & Counseling Centers, a mental health agency that had evaluated Dube, according to Tracy.
“During that evaluation Jessica advised that she had done something sexual” to the child, Tracy wrote in the affidavit.
In November, the child described the incidents that led to the allegations against Dube to a forensic interviewer, according to Tracy. The child also received a physical assessment from the Spurwink Child Abuse Program, but that evaluation provided no specific findings of physical abuse, neglect or sexual trauma.
In late December, police received a warrant to search Dube’s apartment on Green Street in Augusta, where the assaults allegedly had taken place. During the search, they found two items that the child has described to the forensic interviewer: brown pillows and a blanket with a panda on it.
About a week later, police interviewed Dube in the presence of her case manager, according to Tracy.
Dube allegedly told police “that there was an incident involving her and (the child) while they were lying on her bed,” Tracy wrote.
But Dube denied that she had oral sex with the child, and when Tracy described the child’s allegations, she “became very upset and stated that she needed to talk with a lawyer.”
Dube was arrested on a warrant Sunday night at her apartment. On Tuesday afternoon, a jail employee said her bail was set at $1,000 unsecured and that she was in the process of being released.
Charles Eichacker — 621-5642
Twitter: @ceichacker
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