BANGOR, Maine — A Superior Court judge Wednesday sentenced an Orono man to 25 years in prison with all but 15 years suspended for the sexual abuse of four boys between 2004 and 2012.
The judge rejected a plea deal in August that called for Wyatt Higgins-Tripp to be behind bars for a decade.
Superior Court Justice William Anderson also sentenced Higgins-Tripp, 40, to 25 years of probation with conditions that include treatment and having no contact with his victims or their families, having no unsupervised contact with children under the age of 18 and registering as a sex offender for life.
Higgins-Tripp pleaded guilty on July 29 to 15 of the 135 charges on which he was indicted. In a plea agreement with the Penobscot County district attorney’s office, the remaining 120 counts were dismissed at the sentencing.
Anderson said in August that he rejected the deal that would have sent Higgins-Tripp to prison for 10 years because it was not long enough behind bars for “the monstrous acts he committed.”
Anderson also said that Higgins-Tripp has shown no genuine remorse, even though he apologized to the victims when he entered his guilty pleas.
On Wednesday, Anderson said that he felt 15 years was more appropriate than 10 because of the number of victims, the fact that at least one of them was under the age of 12 when the abuse occurred and because of the number of times the children were subjected to abuse.
Some of Higgins-Tripp’s victims were in court Wednesday but did not address the judge. In July, two of Higgins-Tripp’s alleged victims, now teenagers, urged Anderson to impose a harsher sentence than 10 years.
In August, defense attorney Robert Van Horn of Ellsworth urged Anderson to put his client behind bars for 59 months rather than a decade, so the defendant could be immediately sent to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham and begin sex offender treatment through a program there. Van Horn agreed with the underlying 25-year sentence and the term of probation.
“While there are perhaps other approaches that could be taken with crimes like this, they are not available in Maine,” Anderson said Wednesday in sentencing Higgins-Tripp. “This is the type of sentence we impose in Maine for this type of crime. I believe it is an appropriate sentence, and this is what the Legislature wants me to do.”
The judge was not specific about what options might be available in other states.
Higgins-Tripp was indicted by the Penobscot County grand jury in June 2013 on 36 counts of gross sexual assault, 48 counts of unlawful sexual contact and 10 counts of sexual abuse of a minor. At that time, police said he sexually abused a young male relative for more than eight years.
In February 2014, the Penobscot County grand jury indicted Tripp on six counts of gross sexual assault, 25 counts of sexual abuse of a minor and 10 counts of unlawful sexual contact involving the four additional victims.
Higgins-Tripp has been held at the Penobscot County Jail since April 10, 2013, unable to make bail set at $20,000 cash.
He faced up to 30 years in prison on the most serious charges of gross sexual assault.
To reach a sexual assault advocate, call the Statewide Sexual Assault Crisis and Support Line at 800-871-7741, TTY 888-458-5599. This free and confidential 24-hour service is accessible from anywhere in Maine. Calls are automatically routed to the closest sexual violence service provider.