A Westbrook man accused of impersonating a police officer to intimidate prostitutes into having sex with him for free went to trial Tuesday on more than a dozen charges.

Jason Foster, 35, admits hiring women for sex but denies pretending to be an undercover officer or intimidating four prostitutes between October 2013 and October 2014 throughout Cumberland County.

Foster has pleaded not guilty to 18 charges including six counts of gross sexual assault, a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison; one count of theft by extortion, punishable by up to five years in prison; nine misdemeanor counts of impersonating a public servant and two of engaging a prostitute. He was indicted last year by a Cumberland County grand jury and is free on bail.

Megan Elam, Deputy District Attorney for Cumberland County, makes her opening statements in the trial of the State of Maine vs. Jason Foster at Cumberland County Courthouse. Gabe Souza/Staff Photographer

Deputy District Attorney Megan Elam, who is prosecuting the case, said in her opening statements at the Cumberland County Courthouse in Portland that the women Foster intimidated were drug addicts who had turned to prostitution to pay for their drug habits and advertised at backpage.com.

“In all of these instances with all of these women, he pretended to be a police officer when in fact he is a mechanic,” Elam told the jury of 13 men and three women, which includes four alternates.

But Foster’s attorney, Devens Hamlen, said in his opening statement that the prostitutes claiming to be Foster’s victims all know one another and had discussed their accusations before they told their stories to police.

“Jason never forced anyone to have sex with him or pretended to be a police officer or any public servant,” Hamlen told the jury.

Hamlen said Foster admits to finding the advertisements of all four women and arranging face-to-face appointments with them, but that he paid them and was a regular customer of at least one of the women.

“The state’s unique theory in this case is that these women were so alarmed, so frightened of getting arrested that they would do anything to avoid arrest. But the truth is they were engaged in a practice that exposes them to arrest every day,” Hamlen said.

One of Foster’s alleged victims, a 25-year-old woman who said has been clean from her heroin addiction since January, testified that Foster told her, after they had sex at a hotel in 2013, that he was a member of a prostitution task force. He took his money back and demanded more money if she wanted to avoid being arrested, the woman testified.

The other three women are expected to testify later in the trial, which is scheduled to continue for several days.

Related Stories