Prisoners at Maine State Prison are under investigation for alleged sexual abuse of a dog.
The alleged abuse happened in the Warren prison’s Earned Living Unit, a program within the facility that helps people with career skills, said Samuel Prawer, the director of government affairs for the Maine Department of Corrections. Service dogs are trained by some prisoners in the unit.
The department knows about abuse to one dog at this time, and the investigation is into two people, not the Earned Living Unit as a whole, Prawer said.
Prisoners accused of not providing appropriate care for the dogs were removed from the program, Prawer said. He said the Department of Corrections takes the allegations seriously.
It comes at a time when the department is also investigating allegations of hazing, harassment and retaliation among employees, as well as “inappropriate relationships” between employees and prisoners. The prison’s warden, Matthew Magnusson, was no longer running the facility as of Feb. 21, following those allegations.
Separately, a prison official was indicted by a grand jury in July 2023 after he allegedly stole $10,000 from the state over the course of nine years.
Gerald Merrill was deputy superintendent and business manager at the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston and the Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport. Melanie High, 67, was also charged. She allegedly bribed Merrill, who used state-issued credit cards to make payments to five companies controlled by High.
