BANGOR, Maine — A Waterville man who left the state after he was indicted by the Penobscot County grand jury a year ago was sentenced Monday at the Penobscot Judicial Center to four years in prison for “reprehensible” sex crimes.
Mark Meierdirk, 42, was found guilty by a jury in January on three counts of sexual abuse of a minor in 2014.
Jurors found that Meierdirk sexually abused a girl who was in foster care but “not his child” multiple times during 2014, Alice Clifford, deputy district attorney for Penobscot County, who prosecuted the case, said Jan. 15, when the verdict was announced.
The victim was 15, and he was 40 at the time, the prosecutor said.
“I find that it was reprehensible that he was taking this child, who had bounced from foster home to foster home, off to have sex,” Superior Court Justice William Anderson said in imposing the sentence Clifford. “She said she went looking for a friend online and she found him. This was an unfortunate child who was his victim.”
Meierdirk did not address the court.
Meierdirk has a lengthy criminal history, which contributed to his sentence, the judge said.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Toothaker of Ellsworth told Anderson that the “victim went online seeking out someone to have sex with. She put herself out there. My client went on an adult sex site that he had been on before where he met adult women.”
Although Meierdirk testified that the victim said she was 18, the jury did not believe him or they would not have found him guilty, Anderson said.
Toothaker also said that Meierdirk did not flee the state when he was indicted in January 2015 but went to Florida in March “because his life was spiralling out of control.”
Meierdirk has been held without bail at the Penobscot County Jail since July 22, when he was brought back from Florida, according to jail personnel.
He faced up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.