A convicted sex offender from Bath faces charges of indecent conduct and burglary after he allegedly broke into a woman’s home and exposed himself to her.

Police say Stephen McIntire, 55, was a member of a support group for convicted sex offenders that had been meeting at a Brunswick church until the group was told to meet elsewhere following a Nov. 10 sexual assault on the nearby Bowdoin College campus.

Bath police were called to a home on Cherry Street in Bath at 6:15 p.m. on Nov. 24 by a woman who said she was hiding in her bedroom and a man was trying to get in.

The 28-year-old woman said she had come home to find the man sitting on her couch exposing himself, police said.

The woman ran upstairs to her bedroom, locked the door, grabbed a handgun and called 911, police said.

When police arrived the man was gone, but Cpl. Michelle Small and police dog Sampson tracked the suspect to a home on Bumpy Hill Road where McIntire lived. He was not at the home, but police got a search warrant and found items linking McIntire to the crime.

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Police found McIntire on Bumpy Hill Road the following day at 3 a.m. and charged him with burglary, aggravated criminal trespass, criminal threatening, indecent conduct and theft.

McIntire was taken to Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset and was arraigned Nov. 24. His bail was set at $10,000.

Police said McIntire’s criminal history includes a gross sexual assault in 1997, but added that he is no longer required to register on the sex-offender registry. He also was convicted of burglary and theft this year, violation of privacy, criminal trespass and failing to comply with the sex-offender registry in 2014, and violation of privacy in 2004. The 2014 convictions stem from an incident at the privately owned Hyde School where police were called to investigate a report of a man looking in dormitory windows.One one occasion, a hidden video camera caught an image of the man – later identified as McIntire – as he peeped into a window.

Brunswick Police Cmdr. Mark Waltz said McIntire’s probation officer alerted police to the sex- offender support group meeting at First Parish Church near Bowdoin campus. The probation officer said McIntire was a member of the group, which met every Tuesday evening for two years at the church, on the corner of Maine Street and Bath Road.

Following a Nov. 10 sexual assault at housing affiliated with Bowdoin College, church officials terminated the lease with the Massachusetts organization that ran the meetings. A female student had reported that she was raped inside her residence in the Mayflower Apartments, an off-campus complex affiliated with the school. The young woman said she did not know her assailant, who is believed to have entered the building through an unlocked door.

Brunswick Police Cmdr. Marc Hagan said on Nov. 25 that police had never had any complaints or problems about the convicted sex offenders meeting at the church. He also said he knew of no link or suspected link between the support group and the Nov. 10 rape or an attempted assault on Nov. 17 in which a student was grabbed from behind on Potter Street at 8 p.m. In that case, the assailant fled after the woman screamed. Police do not know if the incidents are related.

Waltz said the investigations into the incidents continue.

Police have sent evidence to the Maine State Police crime lab in Augusta. If analysts there are able to retrieve biological trace evidence, that could be used to develop a DNA profile, Waltz said. The profile could then be compared to the DNA profiles the state has on file and those from unsolved rape cases.

 


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