AUGUSTA -- A former Carrabec High School vice principal and athletic director was ordered Friday to serve nine months behind bars for having unlawful sexual contact with a student while giving the boy a ride home from a basketball game last December.

Frank "Skip" Gleason III, 60, of Anson, pleaded guilty to the offense on Jan. 22. The case had been continued until Friday for sentencing.

The charge and subsequent guilty plea by Gleason, who was a respected school administrator and pastor of a local church, shattered the Anson community, District Attorney Evert Fowle said.

"If we can't trust this individual with the pedigree he had, there's nobody in this society you can trust," Fowle said.

Fowle said Gleason admitted kissing and fondling the boy after being presented with a recorded conversation between him and the victim that occurred the next day. The criminal offense occurred Dec. 21, 2007.

Fowle said Gleason repeatedly asked the boy not to say anything about the incident.

Justice Joseph Jabar sentenced Gleason to 364 days in jail, with all but nine months suspended, and one year of probation. Gleason was ordered to report to Somerset County jail by 6 p.m.

Gleason must register as a sex offender for the next 10 years under the state's Sex Offender Notification and Registration Act, and conditions of probation bar him from contact with children younger than 18, except for his own family.

Joshua A. Tardy, Gleason's attorney, said Gleason surrendered his state teaching certificate and is on the brink of financial ruin.

Gleason held a teaching certificate to teach social studies in middle school and high school and to teach business education in kindergarten through grade 12, according to David Connerty-Marin, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. The certificate would expire on July 1, 2012.

Gleason apologized to the boy, and the victim's family and to his own family, saying he made an irresponsible and irrational decision.

"I regret what happened," Gleason said. "I am very remorseful."

Gleason kept his head lowered and his eyes on the table in front of him as he sat next to his attorney and listened to Fowle describe the effects of the crime.

The victim wrote a letter to the judge, saying he thought about the incident every day.

"The only good thing I could think of is the people that I have saved," the boy wrote.

Fowle called the boy a hero "for having the courage to step forward."

The boy's mother told the court that the incident turned her "well-balanced, funny, good kid" into one who thinks of suicide.

"The night of the incident, he felt like he was in a slow-motion movie," she said. "He couldn't get out of that truck fast enough."

The victim's mother has filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of her son. It claims Gleason violated the boy's civil rights and inflicted significant emotional distress.

As part of that case, a federal magistrate judge signed an order placing a lien on $100,000 worth of property owned by Gleason, to be used to pay any judgment against him.

Tardy said Gleason is "losing everything financially and professionally in the church and in the community."

Gleason was pastor of Maranatha Assembly on Church Street in Anson.

Betty Adams -- 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com