Ex-substitute teacher jailed for sex offense

Girl, 15, was guest at offender’s Great Mills home

Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008

David Emile Guillemette, now 55, was sentenced to five years in prison, suspended to an 18-month jail sentence and four years of supervised probation.

‘‘He has to register as a sex offender,” St. Mary’s Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Stanalonis said this week at his office in Leonardtown.

A 15-year-old girl visiting Guillemette’s family was sitting on a couch with him watching television on New Year’s Day when he put his hands inside the girl’s clothing and fondled her, according to charging papers filed by detective Thomas Hedderich of the St. Mary’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations. The visitor asked Guillemette to stop his actions, and pushed him away before running upstairs.

‘‘She was friends with his daughter,” Stanalonis said, ‘‘and she was spending the night [there] with the daughter.”

Guillemette’s wife and daughter were elsewhere in the home when the offense occurred.

Guillemette’s sentence from Friday’s plea agreement allows him to leave jail to go to a job and medical appointments, and requires him to undergo a sexual offender evaluation. A judge barred Guillemette from having any contact with the victim in the case, and from unsupervised contact with any child.

The girl’s parents incurred insurance co-pay costs and other out-of-pocket expenses totaling a restitution amount of $820, the prosecutor said.

Charges against Guillemette of sexual child abuse and second-degree assault were dismissed.

The girl and her mother reported the incident to authorities last March, court papers state.

Guillemette was released on $10,000 bond after his arrest, at which time county school officials said his employment as a substitute teacher immediately ended.

A senior detective said after Guillemette’s arrest that there were no indications that there were other victims, or that the girl was at any time a student of Guillemette.