NEWS

Maine man charged with assault of 2-year-old boy; actions allegedly caught on video

Shawn P. Sullivan
Portsmouth Herald

SANFORD, Maine — A local man is facing charges that he assaulted his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son, causing “serious injuries.”

Authorities arrested Joshua J. Ouellette, 24, in Old Orchard Beach on Monday, Aug. 1, after the Sanford Police Department had issued a warrant for his arrest a few days earlier, according to Sanford Police Lt. Matthew Gagne.

On Monday, July 25, police officers reported to the Sanford campus at Southern Maine Health Care after learning that a 2-year-old boy was being treated there for two broken wrists.

“He had serious injuries, but none were life-threatening,” Gagne said on Wednesday.

Joshua Ouellette

In an affidavit filed with York County Superior Court in Alfred, Sanford police officer Everett Allen said the boy had red marks on his left cheek, bruises on his left shoulder, a bump on his forehead, and bruises on both wrists when he observed him at Southern Maine Health Care.

According to the affidavit, hospital paperwork confirmed that both of the boy's wrists had fractures that were "non-accidental."

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At the hospital, the boy’s mother claimed that her boyfriend, Ouellette, had broken her son’s wrist, according to the affidavit.

The mother explained that she had met Ouellette through Facebook on July 13. She said she had been spending time with Ouellette at Benton Park in Sanford and at Old Orchard Beach. She said she spent the weekend with him from July 16 to 18 and hung out with him again on July 23.

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The mother told police that her son had fallen out of his bed on the night of July 23. She said she picked him up, put him back in his bed, and went back to sleep. She said that she noticed her son had a bump on his head, a red nose, and a bruised shoulder the next morning, according to the affidavit.

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The mother told police that she and her son and Ouellette went to Benton Park on July 24, according to the affidavit. She said her son threw himself out of his stroller and onto the ground. She said Ouellette had told her not to go to her son’s aid because he needed to pick himself up.

Later, the three went to a birthday party, and then returned to Benton Park, where the mother gave her son macaroni and cheese to eat. 

According to the affidavit, the mother told police that Ouellette put a spoon in the child’s hand and twisted his wrist toward his face to show him how to eat. The boy cried during this incident, but the mother did not say anything to Ouellette, according to the affidavit.

The next morning, the mother noticed that her son’s hands, wrists and arms were swollen, and that was when she took him to the hospital.

Boy's assault caught on surveillance footage 

According to Gagne, this is what investigators had to go on as they worked to determined why the boy was in the shape he was in.

Then came the video footage from Caring Unlimited.

The organization, which helps victims of domestic violence, provided police with surveillance footage recorded on its property on July 24 and 25. According to the affidavit, the footage shows Ouellette hurting the 2-year-old boy.

Ouellette is allegedly seen on video on July 24, “roughly” placing the boy in a stroller, poking and flicking the child in the face, and grabbing his fingers on his left hand and bending them backwards. Ouellette also is said to be seen bending the child’s left wrist and twisting his right one. The affidavit also states that Ouellette flicked his cell phone toward where the boy’s head was in the stroller. In the video, the child is seen crying and trying to pull away.

Also according to the affidavit, Ouellette again is seen on video, this time on July 25, twisting and squeezing the child’s wrist as he sits in the stroller. The child “can be seen in pain from this,” according to the affidavit. Moments later, Ouellette is said to have grabbed the boy’s right wrist again, causing him “to be in pain again.”

Police included three still shots of the video in the affidavit.

On July 28, a doctor looked at the boy’s injuries and reviewed the video footage. In an email to Sanford police, the doctor wrote that the videos demonstrated manipulations of the boy’s hands and wrists by an adult male, “with enough apparent force” to cause some degree of discomfort or pain.

“With sufficient force, an adult caregiver grabbing, squeezing, and/or manipulating a child’s hands and wrists, action similar to those demonstrated in the reviewed videos, can certainly cause injury to the child, including fracture and/or bruising,” the doctor wrote, according to the affidavit.

Ouellette charged with two counts of aggravated assault

When interviewed where he was staying in Old Orchard Beach, Ouellette told Sanford police that he had noticed bruises on the boy’s foot and wrist on July 24, according to the affidavit. Ouellette told police he was not concerned by the bruises, as children were prone to scrapes and bruises all the time.

Ouellette denied to police that he had tried to assist the boy with eating with a spoon at Benton Park. He said the mother was the only one trying to assist the child.

Ouellette did tell police that he remembered that he and his girlfriend had swung the boy by his wrists at the beach, in order to prevent waves from knocking him over, according to the affidavit.

Ouellette is charged with two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of assaulting a child who is less than six years old. He is being held at York County Jail in Alfred on $10,000 cash bail.