Elderly man too ill to attend sex assault arraignment

James Tilton stands in the doorway of his Second Street home last September. (Lebanon Voice file photo)

ROCHESTER - The 87-year-old Rochester man charged with sexual assault against a 65-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer is on oxygen and wheelchair bound at a New Hampshire rehabilitation facility today and still unable to attend his arraignment in Strafford County Superior Court, his defense lawyer said on Thursday.

James Tilton, of Second Street, the octogenarian charged in the Sept. 4 incident, was recently hospitalized and may suffer from dementia, said his lawyer, Stuart Dedopoulos of Durham, N.H.

Dedopoulos said he is not sure when Tilton will be released from the rehab facility and able to attend court, but said it’s the court’s option to arraign him in his hospital bed if it so chooses.

Tilton is accused of assaulting the woman as she delivered his midday meal. According to the arrest affidavit, Tilton grabbed her around the waist, pinned her arms behind her back, then put his finger “in the crack of her buttocks over her clothing, thrust his groin area into her repeatedly and licked her neck at the same time.”

When The Lebanon Voice interviewed Tilton about a week after the alleged assault, he said he couldn’t remember the incident and wouldn’t recognize the volunteer if he saw her.

Tilton, a retired worker at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, was arrested almost a week after the incident on Sept. 9. Police said there were no injuries reported.

Dedopoulos fears the elderly man may suffer from dementia.

“They think he’s a criminal,” Dedopoulos said on Thursday. “I think he’s just an elderly sick man who’s having serious physical and thought process problems. I’m not sure if he’s suffering from dementia or not.”

Tilton is charged with one count of simple assault and two counts of sexual assault. All the charges are Class A misdemeanors, meaning Tilton is facing up to three years in the county jail, more than $7,000 in fines and six years of probation.

County Attorney Thomas Velardi said today that in cases in which the accused is of advanced age, prosecutors try to “exercise speedy trial rights and get the matter before a judge or jury as expediently as possible.”