Maine man pleads not guilty to assault of 2-year-old boy

ALFRED, Maine — A 24-year-old man accused of assaulting his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son in Sanford this past summer has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Joshua J. Ouellette, of Old Orchard Beach, entered his plea during a Zoom arraignment in York County Superior Court on Wednesday, Dec. 21.

Ouellette is charged with two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of assaulting a child who is less than 6 years old.

Ouellette attended the court proceeding remotely from the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, where he is currently being held on $10,000 cash bail.

Superior Court Justice Richard Mulhern ordered that Ouellette not have any contact with the 2-year-old boy or any minor under the age of 18, including his own biological son. If Ouellette violates this no-contact order, he could face additional charges.

Boy's assault caught on surveillance footage

The Sanford Police Department began investigating the 2-year-old boy’s injuries toward the end of July, when police officers reported to Southern Maine Health Care’s campus in Sanford after learning that he was being treated there for two broken wrists.

In the affidavit filed for the case, 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 the hospital. The boy’s mother claimed that her boyfriend, Ouellette, had broken her son’s wrists.

The affidavit for the case included three still shots from video surveillance footage provided by Caring Unlimited.

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.”

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.

When interviewed, Ouellette told 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 told police that he remembered that he and his girlfriend had swung the boy by his wrists at the beach, to prevent waves from knocking him over, according to the affidavit.

Next up in Ouellette’s case is a dispositional conference on April 6, 2023.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Maine man pleads not guilty to assault of 2-year-old boy in Sanford