Florida man, Augusta woman convicted of recorded child sexual assault

AUGUSTA – A Florida man and an Augusta woman were sentenced to prison Thursday for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy while video calling each other via FaceTime.

Matthew J. Elston, 33, of Punta Gorda, Florida, was sentenced in Kennebec County Superior Court to eight years in prison after completing a five and a half year sentence he is currently serving in Florida for sex crimes. against another child in that state.

Taylor R. Lewis, 29, of Augusta, was sentenced to three years in prison.

The pair, who prosecutor Shannon Flaherty, an assistant district attorney, said were in a relationship, acted on a plan largely orchestrated by Elston so that the boy would meet Lewis in the parking lot of the Gardiner McDonald’s, where they sexually abused him.

That act was broadcast to Elston, who was watching from Florida at the time via the FaceTime video calling app. He also recorded the video and later shared it with others. Flaherty said Elston masturbated, including on the shared FaceTime video, while Lewis sexually assaulted the boy.

The victim said in a statement read out in court by a family friend that the incident has affected his mental health and turned him into a completely different person. It causes him to lash out angrily at his peers, the statement said, and has negatively affected his other relationships, caused him to have PTSD and suicidal thoughts, prevents him from sleeping at night and has caused him to be 50 pounds lost because he can. hardly any food.

Both Elston and Lewis were charged with sexual exploitation of a minor and sexual abuse of a minor, the most serious charge being sexual exploitation of a minor, a class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Elston was charged as an accessory to these two charges because he did not physically participate in the assault and was not even in Maine at the time. But, Flaherty said, Elston was the instigator of the crime, was the primary planner of the encounter, and without his actions it would never have happened.

That, combined with Elston’s criminal record, which includes other assaults on children, earned Elston an eight-year prison sentence from Supreme Court Justice Michaela Murphy, none of which was suspended.

Elston’s criminal record includes a March 2023 conviction in Florida on charges of unlawful sexual activity with certain minors for committing a sex act with a victim under the age of 18 in October 2022, for which he is in the middle of a five-year prison sentence. -a prison sentence of six months, according to a spokesperson for the Florida Office of the State Attorney.

Lewis, who has no criminal record, was also sentenced to eight years in prison, but with all but three of those years suspended, meaning she will only spend three years in prison if she complies with the terms of her three-year probation when she is released from prison.

Elston’s attorney, Lisa Whittier, tried to have his Maine sentence served concurrently with the remaining time on his Florida sentence, but Murphy refused and made the sentence consecutive to the Florida sentence, noting that the crimes were completely different facts were, with different victims, in different circumstances. states.

Elston, wearing a green Kennebec County jail uniform and with his hands in cuffs around his waist, stood abruptly when Murphy announced that his sentence would be served consecutively after his Florida prison term, and left the courtroom, escorted by a prison guard, before Murphy finished announcing his sentence.

Earlier in court, Elston said he disagreed with the way the state described the incident, but said he would never take the case to a trial where the victim would likely have had to testify publicly about what happened to him.

Whittier said Elston had his jaw broken by another inmate and was sexually assaulted while incarcerated in Florida, where, she said, prison guards do not protect inmates.

“I want the court to know that I do not believe I will ever come back to the state of Maine,” Elston said of the Florida prison attack. “I have been stabbed, raped and jumped on every day. These are the consequences of my crimes.”

The victim’s mother testified in court that her son’s assault occurred at a time in his life when he was very vulnerable. She said that when the court hearings in the case came around, she could see him changing and engaging in risky behavior, including totaling his car in an accident in Gardiner, after which he told her it really affected him.

She urged the court to ensure Elston served his sentence consecutively.

“It is clear that Matthew is a habitual pedophile and if the court allows him to serve his sentence concurrently it will send the message to my son that what happened to him does not matter,” she said.

The Kennebec Journal is not naming the victim or his mother because it is the newspaper’s policy not to identify victims of sexual abuse without their consent.

Elston was also accused of distributing sexually explicit material for sending the FaceTime video to other people. Flaherty said Elston told people what he had done and they didn’t believe him, so he sent them the video.

Kayla Alves, Lewis’ attorney, said she was not aware her encounter with the victim was being recorded or that it could be shared with others. A distribution charge initially filed against Lewis was dropped by prosecutors.

Lewis admitted to performing a sex act on the boy when confronted by a relative of the victim, although she said it was Elston’s idea.

Numerous friends and family members were in court to support Lewis, and Murphy said she had received many letters from them saying that Lewis had been kind and helpful to them and that he was a good person.

Alves said Lewis had been in a relationship with Elston since she was 16 years old and that he physically abused her and had sexually explicit photos of her that he threatened to distribute if she did not do what he wanted.

“She met him when she was a child and he started using her sexually,” Alves said of Lewis and Elston. “She has accepted responsibility. But overall, we think Taylor’s story is more than just this video of the crime. Taylor is a victim herself.”

Both Elston and Lewis will have to register with the Maine Sex Offender Registry for the rest of their lives.