RUMFORD — A District Court judge has granted a protection from abuse order alleging sexual abuse against an Auburn lawyer who is seeking election to become the district attorney for Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.
The order was requested by one of Seth Carey’s former clients, a woman who has been living at his house in Rumford.
Carey, who most recently practiced law in Rumford, recently moved his practice to Auburn.
After learning of the allegations against Carey, Maine Republican Party Chairman Demi Kouzounas called on him to end his bid for district attorney.
“We in the Maine GOP don’t believe in convicting people in the court of public opinion for political purposes, but when there are actual, credible allegations of sexual violence, they must be taken with the utmost seriousness,” Kouzounas said in a prepared statement. “Fighting domestic and sexual violence is more important than political ambition, and we’ve got to keep our priorities straight. This charge must be addressed, first and foremost, and our good people in central and western Maine should not have a cloud of doubt hovering over their heads. To ensure that, Seth Carey should withdraw from his race. It is the right and only thing to do.”
The motion for a protection from abuse order was filed against Carey, 42, at Rumford District Court last week and granted Friday.
In an email to the Sun Journal, Carey said the accusation is “100 percent a false fabrication.”
“I am very confident that this mistake of law by the judge will be corrected on appeal,” he wrote.
According to the woman’s request for the order, she believed Carey posed an “immediate and present danger” to her, and that he had sexually assaulted her in the home they shared.
The woman, who had been a client of Carey’s, moved into his home in 2017. The two reportedly have separate bedrooms.
In her affidavit in support of the order, she said, “I’ve had to put a padlock on my bedroom door to keep him from coming into my room at night.”
She said she was sexually assaulted while sitting in the living room, and that Carey once “grabbed the back of my hair and shoved my face into his private area (and) tried to drag me in his room telling me ‘I gave you a place to live, you owe me.'”
“He was my lawyer and now is using that to do whatever he wants to me,” Carey’s accuser wrote in her sworn affidavit.
At that time she moved into his home in 2017, she claims he “told me if I don’t have sex with him, he was going to throw all of my stuff out.”
According to her affidavit, she has retained messages from him proving her allegations.
“I’m at a loss of what to do about this,” she said.
According to the woman, Carey lives in Lewiston during the week and in Rumford on weekends.
She asked the court to order Carey to stop abusing her, to have no contact with her and not to come near her. She also has asked that she be allowed to remove her belongings from Carey’s house in Rumford.
The court ordered those terms and has declared that Carey must stay away from the Rumford property until May 1. He will be permitted to return to the property once before that time, with a police escort, to retrieve his personal property.
Carey also has been ordered to return private images of the woman to her, and is prohibited from further “or future” dissemination of those images.
Carey has been suspended from practicing law several times over the past 10 years, most recently in 2016, when he was suspended for two years for failing to properly discharge his professional duties. That suspension was later put on hold, allowing him to practice law, but with some restrictions.
In that case, which came before a panel of the grievance commission at the Overseers of the Bar in the fall of 2015, several Maine judges testified that Carey appeared, at times, incompetent to represent his clients in court.
He also was suspended in 2009 for six months after several lawyers and judges questioned his competence to handle criminal matters in the courtroom. He also received a two-month concurrent suspension later that year for conduct unworthy of an attorney after he attacked a puppy owned by a female acquaintance.
In addition, Carey was the subject of a harassment notice filed by the Rumford Police Department after he became aggressive and was blocked from entering the police station.
In 2016, Carey filed suit against the NFL, trying to recover draft picks lost by the New England Patriots in the wake of “Deflate-gate.”
Carey filed papers to be on the June 12 Republican primary ballot for district attorney under the name “S. Thomas Carey,” where he will face off against Alexander Willette, 29, of Lewiston.
That district attorney’s seat is currently held by Andrew Robinson, who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Carey, who graduated from the Vermont Law School in 2001, is licensed to practice in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut and the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine.
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