LEWISTON, Maine — Police thanked the public for helping locate a 56-year-old man who is charged with exposing himself to two children Saturday in Sunnyside Park.
John G. Garshva, of 156 Holland St. in Lewiston, remained in the Androscoggin County Jail on $2,500 bond Sunday night. He is charged with two felony counts of visual sexual aggression for exposing himself to the two children, both under the age of 12, and one count each of assault and criminal threatening.
“Obviously, we praise the assistance of the community in helping us find this guy,” Lewiston police Lt. David St. Pierre said.
St. Pierre said the initial call about Garshva came in just before 2 p.m. According to witnesses, the two victims came screaming from the woods near Sunnyside Park, located between Winter Street and the Androscoggin River next to River Cemetery. The children said a man exposed himself to them.
St. Pierre said when police arrived adults in the area were already looking for Garshva and continued to assist police in their search. One of the men who helped with the initial search called police again at 6:15 p.m. to inform them he had found the suspect sleeping in the woods under some brush.
The assault and criminal threatening charges stem from Garshva hitting one of the men with a stick and threatening both of them before police arrived.
St. Pierre did not know whether or not the men who assisted in the search were relatives of the children or not.
Garshva has a long history with authorities in both Maine and Massachusetts. In 2006, while living in Topsham, he was sentenced to nine months in jail after pleading guilty to two stalking charges, one involving a 9-year-old girl in Lisbon and the other involving a case in Lewiston.
Garshva was arrested in June 2006 by Lisbon police after concerned neighbors reported seeing a man attempting to get a 9-year-old girl into his pickup truck by offering her money. He was later charged in a stalking incident in Lewiston that was reported after the story about the Lisbon arrest appeared in the newspaper.
At the time, a detective with the Lisbon Police Department was quoted in the Sun Journal as saying he would have liked to have seen a longer sentence imposed. But under Maine law the maximum jail time would have only been one year because the charges were both class D misdemeanors under Maine law because Maine’s stalking law makes no distinction based on the ages of victims.
Garshva is listed on the Maine Sex Offender Registry website as being convicted in Massachusetts of intent to commit rape, indecent assault and battery, and on three charges of open and gross lewd and lascivious behavior, all between 1989 and 1994.
This guy is going to kill someone if he isn’t stopped.
If he had exposed himself to our kids, my husbadn would have that job all taken care of. Why do we keep letting them go? It’s the only behavior for which there is no effective treatment, other than euthanasia
Slime…..just slime.
why is this guy still released? are you waiting for worse things to happen? I would say, with his history, he is nothing but trouble and needs to be locked away before he causes greater harm than he already has. Some of these people just cannot be rehabilitated!!
EXACTLY! Just like that Steve Ricci guy down in Portland.Keep releasing him even after detailing rape fantasies.Just a matter of time before someone is assaulted.
I think this man has proven himself time and time again that he is an immediate threat to our children. The more chances he gets to pull off what he actually wants to do with these kids will ultimately end in a missing persons report/death.
Lock him up for our childrens sake!!
yuck! Hate the sin not the sinner.
Sinners that repeatedly sin against our most vulnerable deserve our hate!
You without sin cast the first stone.
Since I can honestly say I hate no one, I’ll just say he is worthy of everyone’s derision and loathing. He is a broken machine ‘human’ that a civilized society needs to put away for repeatedly repeating his sin. 25 years before heysoos christos preached his version of how society should treat someone like this, society dealt with them much differently and some still do. I’m not going into a religious debate, just say that I’m an agnostic who has done some research on the histories of various versions of the ones descended from Abraham, and don’t adhere to any particular one. That’s one of today’s world problems: “MIne is the only true religion!”
I never said he should’nt be incarcerated.He obviously is not rehabilitated.
And his type can’t be, short of castration.
agree …what ever it takes to be a deterrent(that is from a legal standpoint.) Further , I would like to comment that it took the public to find him. No disrespect to law enforcement but he was not supervised correctly in the community.Another one who fell through the cracks.
True; it did take a ‘community effort to find him.
I want to apologize for coming on strong about theology. I’ve had too many argue with only chapter and verse. :)
Castration (physical or chemical) does not necessarily work. To quote another post “the urge to hurt comes from the mind, not the genitals”.
The charge is “Visual sexual aggression”? Is it any wonder that our courts are screwed up and that the criminals run free?
He needs to be kept out of society forever, which is true of most of these offenders. A pedophile stays a pedophile, tho maybe, just maybe, a few can correct their behavior….but they never lose the desire for children. This man has shown that he cannot control his behavior. He will only get worse. They should not keep letting him out!
It seems to me that the 2006 case could have been charged as attempted kidnapping. I wasn’t there so I do not know, HOWEVER occasionally law enforcement makes mistakes on issuing charges.
Looks like a normal enough guy.
Yikes!!
Sleeping under some brush = passed out drunk and or drugged under some brush
Lock him up and throw away the key. Guys like him do not get rehabilitated. There is no effective treatment for people like him.
Creep!!!
what i find odd is that he was a sex offender ,could of been anywhere and NOBODY pays attention to the whereabouts of these crimianals that do the worse crimes imaginable and noone can track them they need the publics help!!Maybe they should keep track of theses sickos before they ruin another childs life!!!I thought they was supposed to register and be tracked,come on people get with it!!!!