Convicted Sex Offender Pleads Guilty to Rape, Invasion of Privacy

Originally published by The Associated Press, August 10, 2001

WATERVILLE, Maine — A convicted molester who vowed to stay away from children four years ago was back in court on Thursday to plead guilty to raping a 13-year-old boy and using a camera to record boys in a locker room.

Brian Moreau, 33, was arrested last fall after the sexual assault at an abandoned property in the city. Two weeks later, a parent allegedly saw him with a camera in the locker room of the Alfond Youth Recreation Center in Waterville.

Moreau, who has two previous convictions for the rape of a child, is one of the first defendants to have been convicted under a new Maine law that allows prosecutors to recommend and a judge to order unlimited prison or probation time for so-called dangerous sexual predators.

Prosecutors plan to ask for 40 years in prison, with all but 20 years suspended, and 20 years of probation, said Assistant District Attorney Allen Kelley after the hearing in Kennebec County Superior Court.

Sentencing has been delayed so Moreau can be psychologically evaluated, Kelley said.

Moreau ended up in Waterville after completing a sentence for violating probation on an earlier child sex charge. He was not required to register with police because his convictions were for crimes that happened before 1992, when the sex offender registry law went into effect.

Moreau has a long history of sex crimes involving children.

Before his release from prison in 1994, police distributed posters in Portland notifying residents that he planned to move in with his parents, who lived a half-block from an elementary school.

It marked the first time there was public notification of a sex offender moving into a neighborhood in the state.