A Berlin man charged six years ago with sexually assaulting a minor has reached a plea deal. The question now is what exactly the sentence will be.
Perry Thompson, 48, had been arrested in 2015 at the state Agency of Education’s central office, where he worked at the time as an administrative assistant to the agency secretary and to the State Board of Education.
Though Thompson was arrested at the state’s agency central office, the allegation did not relate to his work there.
Thompson pleaded guilty Wednesday in Orange County Superior criminal court in Chelsea during a hearing held via video to sexual assault on a minor and lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor that dates back to 2013.
The plea deal allows the prosecutor to ask for a sentence of up to 10 to 25 years in prison. His attorney will be able to argue for any lesser sentence.
Thompson had been facing a charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child, which carried a penalty of 25 years to life in prison.
On Wednesday, Judge Thomas Zonay ordered a presentence investigation by the state Department of Corrections, including a psycho-sexual evaluation, before Thompson’s sentencing hearing.
Zonay said he will decide at that time whether he will accept the plea deal reached by the attorneys in the case. If he doesn’t, the judge told Thompson, he could then withdraw his guilty pleas.
Orange County State’s Attorney Dickson Corbett said after Wednesday’s hearing that the victim supported the plea agreement.
“I hope that they find justice at the end of this,” Dickson said.
Thompson’s case has been working its way through the legal system for years, and in that time several different lawyers have represented him.
In October 2018, Thompson went on trial, and shortly after it began, he reached a plea deal. However, Thompson’s plea was later withdrawn when it was determined he had not been made aware that he could have received a life sentence, based on the charge to which he had pleaded guilty, according to David Sleigh, Thompson’s current attorney. He was not involved in the case at that time.
Court filings stated that a teenager had come forward in 2015, making the allegations against Thompson to investigators with the Department for Children and Families. Thompson was arrested days later and placed on leave from his job at the Agency of Education. He no longer works there.
The teenager told authorities that Thompson first sexually assaulted him when he was 13 years old. VTDigger reported in 2015, when Thompson was arrested, that affidavits and interviews with him and the teenager stated that in 2013 Thompson took the minor with him for an overnight work-related trip to Stowe. At that time, according to the affidavit, Thompson was an employee of the Vermont State Employees Credit Union.
Thompson told investigators he was later fired, VTDigger reported, because his boss got angry that he had taken someone who was not a relative with him on the trip without getting permission.
Court papers also state that the Orange County Special Investigations Unit had interviewed the teenager in 2013 during an investigation into Facebook messages between Thompson and the teenager. The messages included references to sex and drugs.
At that time, the teenager told investigators he had not been sexually assaulted, court records stated. VTDigger reported that, in 2015, the teenager told investigators he had not told them about the sexual assaults two years earlier because Thompson had given him marijuana and cigarettes.
Thompson is currently free, with conditions governing his release.
Ted Fisher, a spokesperson for the Agency of Education, declined comment on the case when reached Wednesday.
