HOULTON, Maine — A convicted sex offender and lifetime registrant on the state’s sex offender registry was sentenced to 10 years in prison on June 18 after waiving his right to trial and pleading guilty to a number of sex charges.
Gary E. Schillinger, 60, of Houlton pleaded guilty in Aroostook County Superior Court in Houlton to seven counts of dissemination of sexually explicit material and three counts of possession of sexually explicit material, Assistant District Attorney Kurt Kafferlin said Friday.
His prison sentence will be followed by 12 years of supervised probation.
Schillinger was arrested in March after a search warrant was executed at his home and police discovered sexually explicit material that he had been disseminating over the Internet.
Houlton Police Chief Butch Asselin said that the investigation initially began in February, when police received requests to do a welfare check on Schillinger at his Steward Road residence.
Kafferlin said that officers responded to check on Schillinger and during their interaction he became “very upset and told officers that he had not wished to be born a child molester.”
Asselin said that Houlton police Detective Stewart Kennedy began a search of Schillinger on Facebook. Images were posted on Schillinger’s Facebook page that prompted Kennedy to contact the National Center for Missing Children, who assisted Houlton police in the investigation.
Asselin said that as a result of the information provided by the National Center for Missing Children, it was determined that Schillinger was disseminating child pornography using his email accounts. Photographs attached to the email allegedly contained explicit pictures of children under the age of 12. There is no evidence that any of the images were of children from the greater Houlton area.
Kafferlin said that the Facebook page displayed a number of fetish type photographs of children being spanked.
A search warrant was obtained by Kennedy on Wednesday and executed. The search was conducted by members of the Houlton Police Department, Department of Homeland Security, Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit and Officer Bill Scull of the Presque Isle Police Department.
Schillinger was placed under arrest without incident and taken to the Houlton Police Department. Police seized computers, journals and thumb drives during the search.
Schillinger was convicted of public indecency on May 14, 1985, and three counts of gross sexual misconduct on June 9, 1986. He was jailed in 1986 for sexually assaulting three girls in one family, all of whom were under age 14. He also was convicted of using the U.S. Postal Service to send photocopied pictures of children engaging in actual and simulated sex acts. On Dec. 3, 1990, Schillinger’ probation was revoked for failing to complete sex offender counseling.
In 2008, Schillinger was beaten by two men after he outlined his status as a sex offender and spoke out against a plan that altered how residents were notified about sex offenders living in the community during a town council meeting. The men were later arrested and charged.
Schillinger was represented by Jeff Pickering, a Houlton attorney.