PORTLAND – A man from England who was charged over the summer with having sex with a 13-year-old Levant girl has now been charged by federal authorities in Maine with production of child pornography.

Nicholas Cheese, 26, of Oxford, England, was arrested on a federal warrant on Friday and brought to U.S. District Court in Bangor to make his initial appearance on the charge.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk ordered Cheese held in custody pending his trial on the new charge after Cheese, accompanied by his attorney, David Bate, waived his right to a detention hearing.

The girl’s parents first reported to the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office on June 30 that she had been sexually assaulted by a man from England. In interviews with the girl and later with Cheese, detectives learned that he and the girl had been communicating via the Internet for 14 months before he visited Maine, and the girl had sent him sexually explicit videos and images, according to court records.

Cheese arranged to meet the girl in Bangor, where he had sexual relations with her at a hotel from June 26 to 29, court records say. Detectives who interviewed Cheese at the hotel afterward, seized his cell phone which contained a sexually explicit image of the girl taken at the hotel, according to an affidavit filed by a federal agent seeking the charge against Cheese.

In addition to the new federal charge, punishable by between 15 and 30 years in federal prison, Cheese still faces charges of gross sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a minor at the state level in Penobscot County.

Staff Writer Scott Dolan can be contacted at: 791-6304 or at

sdolan@mainetoday.com