A former prison guard at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a female inmate who was under his supervision before he resigned.

Bret Butterfield, 23, of Auburn, has been in custody at the York County Jail in Alfred since Aug. 26 on a Class B felony charge of gross sexual assault by a prison supervisor. He is currently being held on $50,000 cash bail, according to the York County Sheriff’s Office.

Maine State Police spokesman Stephen McCausland confirmed Butterfield’s arrest late Wednesday afternoon in response to an inquiry earlier in the week by the Portland Press Herald, but he provided few details.

Until Wednesday, no government agency would confirm Butterfield’s arrest. State police, the Attorney General’s Office and the York County District Attorney’s Office all previously said they had no records of charges against Butterfield.

“No comment,” Scott Fish, the spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said in an email statement on the day of Butterfield’s arrest after being asked for details.

Fish subsequently confirmed that Butterfield resigned from his job as a corrections officer on June 30 but declined to say anything about the case against him.

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Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Fitzpatrick also declined to comment on the day of Butterfield’s arrest.

Butterfield began working as a guard at the Windham prison in 2012, according to the July/August edition of the Department of Corrections newsletter.

It was not immediately clear Wednesday evening whether Butterfield has an attorney. Jail officials would not say whether Butterfield has any scheduled court dates. No one returned a phone message left at his parents’ home in Newcastle this week.

The female inmate Butterfield is accused of assaulting, a 25-year-old convicted burglar, has a photo on her Facebook page showing her and Butterfield kissing on the lips.

Butterfield’s own Facebook page shows a photo of him embracing his wife, who currently holds the title of Mrs. Auburn and is a candidate to become Mrs. Maine 2015.

The woman Butterfield is accused of assaulting served her prison term at Maine Correctional Center and Southern Maine Reentry Center in Alfred before being released on April 4.

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The woman, who is not being identified because she is considered a victim in Butterfield’s case, was first sentenced to prison after pleading guilty in 2009 in two felony burglary cases, according to those case files at the Cumberland County Courthouse.

The woman was initially ordered to serve two years of a seven-year sentence in prison, but she was accused of violating her probation in 2011 shortly after her release. She was ordered into an intensive court-monitored drug program in 2012. But she was charged with trafficking drugs into the Cumberland County Jail in Portland while in the program and sent back to prison for another two years for those violations, according to court records.

Since the woman’s latest release from prison in April, she has tested positive for opiates at least twice, once on June 9 and again on Aug. 5, court records state.

After the Aug. 5 violation, her probation officer, David Redmond, filed a motion in her case to have her conditions of her release altered to state that she have “no contact either direct or indirect with Bret Butterfield.”

The woman is due in the Cumberland County Courthouse on Friday for a probation violation hearing.

Redmond did not return a phone message left at the probation office last week seeking comment on why he sought a court order barring her from having any contact with Butterfield.

The woman’s attorney, Robert LeBrasseur, said in a brief phone conversation last week that he is new to her case and unaware of the allegations against Butterfield.

If convicted, Butterfield will face as much as 10 years in prison.


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