Eliot Cutler released on bail pending continued bail revocation hearing
Hancock County Superior Court Justice Patrick Larson says hearing will continue on June 1
Cutler told the court that was ‘panicked’ and ‘dysregulated’ due to internet restrictions before his last arrest in South Portland in February 2025. Photo by Tricia Thomas.
May 27, 2026
By Tricia Thomas
ELLSWORTH—Former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler, a convicted sex offender charged with repeatedly violating his probation by accessing pornography, was released on bail on May 22 while he awaits a June 1 hearing that could send him back to prison for more than three years.
Until his release, Cutler had been held without bail at the Hancock County Jail following an arrest in Portland on February 9, when he allegedly was found at a South Portland hotel with several pornographic DVDs—items he is barred from possessing under the terms of his probation. That arrest was Cutler’s third since last fall for alleged violations of his probation for a 2023 conviction for possession of more than 142,000 images of child pornography. Cutler, an attorney, was sentenced to nine months in prison after that conviction. He was released in January 2024 for good behavior, after serving seven months. When released, Cutler was required to register as a sex offender and was given six years of probation. Under the terms of that probation, he was not allowed to view sexually explicit materials, among other prohibitions.
Hancock County district attorney Bob Granger and Cutler’s probation officer, Sam Payson, have asked the court in five separate motions filed since last October to send Cutler back to jail for the 39 months that are remaining on his six-year probation.
According to court documents, Cutler was charged last October with violating his probation by allegedly using an unmonitored electronic device to access pornographic materials in September and October, and for allegedly failing to notify his probation officer that he had done so. Cutler posted $1,000 bail and was released on December 16.
In January, Cutler was charged with violating his probation a second time by allegedly accessing pornographic materials in Brooklin on December 28 and January 2. Cutler was released from jail on January 14, after posting $10,000 in bail and agreeing to stricter terms for his continued probation, including attendance at court-mandated “problematic specialized treatment” counseling sessions. He was also banned from using the internet.
Less than a month later, Cutler was arrested in South Portland for alleged possession of pornographic DVDs. According to the police report, Cutler told state police, who were at the hotel on other business when they came upon him, that he “can’t help himself,” and that he has “had this problem for 65 years.” Cutler was jailed in Cumberland County on the charges, and later transferred to Hancock County Jail.
On February 20, Granger and Cutler’s probation officer, Sam Payson, asked the court to convert Cutler’s remaining probation to jail time “for the protection of the community” after an alleged fourth probation violation. This time, Cutler was charged with violating probation because he was “unsatisfactorily discharged” from his court-mandated counseling sessions due to a failure to show up for them. Cutler’s attorney, Walter McKee, has argued that his client was a no-show at those sessions because he was being held in Cumberland County Jail.
At the start of the afternoon bail revocation hearing on May 22, Hancock County Superior Court Justice Patrick Larson accepted Cutler’s admissions of guilt to charges contained in three of the five motions to revoke probation. Larson also accepted the state’s request to dismiss the fourth motion before hearing witness testimony—including testimony from Cutler himself—on the fifth.
Filed on April 21, this most recent motion alleges that Cutler violated the conditions of his probation for a fifth time by possessing encrypted computer files and by failing to supply correct passwords to forensic investigators who were examining his laptop and other electronic devices.
“This is Mr. Cutler’s 5th violation of his probation conditions in a relatively short timeframe, all of which are due to his inability to refrain from pornography and participate in court ordered PSB [problematic sexual behavior] treatment,” Payson stated in the April 21 motion.
“This is another example of Mr. Cutler demonstrating that he has no intent of following his ordered conditions. It is obvious that he does not intend on following his probation conditions or rules set forth by the court. Therefore probation will not be a benefit,” Payson added. “I recommend a full revocation of approximately 39 months for the protection of the community.”
On the stand on May 22, Payson reiterated his concerns.
“It is extremely difficult to supervise someone who spends most of the time trying to circumvent the conditions,” Payson said.
After the court heard testimony from special agent Jason Bosco, a state police special victims unit officer who arrested Cutler in Portland, and Dawn Ego, a digital forensics examiner with the special victims unit tasked with examining Cutler’s electronic devices, Cutler took the stand.
During nearly an hour of testimony, Cutler, clean-shaven and dressed in a navy blue prison jumpsuit with his ankles shackled, refuted the state’s charges that he had taken steps to hide his computer activity or specific files.
When questioned by McKee, Cutler said he provided passwords for his devices to investigators “to the extent that I could remember them.”
“But, let’s remember that I hadn’t had access to my devices and, therefore, to my passwords and login information for four months, but I tried to remember as best I could,” Cutler testified. Cutler added that he also provided login credentials for an online password management tool that he used.
Cutler also maintained that, according to terms of his probation, he was allowed to possess encrypted files related to his health or finances.
“It is extremely difficult to supervise someone who spends most of the time trying to circumvent the conditions.”
Cutler said that he was in possession of unregistered electronic devices, including old “burner” phones he’d used during two decades of travel to and from Asia, because he was selling them online.
“I was selling old electronic equipment on E-bay and, at that point, I was selling those phones, along with other pieces of electronic equipment,” Cutler testified.
The phones needed to be turned on to make sure they worked and “wiped” of all data before they were sold, Cutler said.
“If you’re going to sell, whether you sell it on eBay or anywhere else, you do a factory reset or otherwise wipe it, because you always clean a phone, certainly a phone or a computer, before you sell it,” Cutler said.
During his testimony, Cutler admitted to watching “strip tease” videos online on January 2, after they popped up during an internet search for ways to strip labels off of wooden wine crates five days earlier. Cutler said he reported to Payson the next day that he had done so, but told the court that he did not consider the videos to be “sexually explicit.”
“I reported it, I think, on the third [of January], because I don’t recall today, and I didn’t recall at the time, viewing any sexually explicit activity on those videos. When I was viewing them, I knew I was viewing them on a monitored device. I knew that YouTube prohibits, by their policy, sexually explicit material, and I didn’t see any warnings that I was about to view sexually explicit material,” Cutler testified. “I’m not contesting that it was there, but I felt comfortable enough to view what I was looking at on a device that I knew was being monitored, and then I self-reported.”
In response to questions from McKee, Cutler, 79, said that his “pornography addiction” started when he was “12 or 13” years old.
“For the better part of six decades, I was viewing pornography two or three times a week, sometimes more often if I was traveling and, sometimes, for hours at a time,” he said.
“It started when I was a kid. It was magazines—what we’d call ‘girlie’ magazines. And then, I went away to school and everybody was trading these magazines. I was habituated by the time I was 16 or 17. I went away to school and I was addicted, I would say, by the time I was 20 when I was in college,” Cutler said of the progression of his addiction. “Over time, over the next several decades, I migrated from magazines to videotapes to DVDs, and then the internet.”
While Cutler said that his addiction “certainly stalled” after his 2023 conviction for possessing child pornography, it didn’t come to a stop until after he was released from jail and began his probation. A 30-day residential program that he completed after his arrest but before his sentencing also helped, Cutler said.
“It’s important to say that it’s hard to believe, but true, that I kept this addiction a secret for all of those 60 years, which was a tragic mistake. I never reached out for help because I was afraid of what would eventually…” Cutler said, his voice breaking. “After I was arrested, it all came down on me in a sort of terribly ironic way, because everything that happened to me is what I feared would happen if I reached out for help.”
Cutler said he was “surprised” and “panicked” by the internet ban that Superior Court Justice Harold Stewart issued on January 14, stating that he and his wife, a psychiatrist, lead a “digitized life” that is highly dependent on the internet.
“I can’t do banking. Maybe most importantly, I can’t do my therapy. I can’t attend [12-step] meetings, because I was doing both virtually because it’s a three-hour drive each way,” Cutler said. “I can’t do any financial management. I can’t file my taxes because I can’t access my tax return information. We can’t have television or music in our house, because all of that was digital. We can’t manage our property, because we don’t have control over HVAC or security systems. I mean, I could go on and on.”
Cutler described his state of mind just before his arrest in Portland.
“First of all, I’m a wreck. I am panicked. I am dysregulated. I am disorganized because of this intent ban,” he said.
Cutler said he went to Portland for medical appointments and to have dinner with one of his brothers. While there, on Monday, February 9, Cutler said he also wanted to buy a copy of the New York Times “to read about the Superbowl” that had aired the day before. In his search for a copy of the newspaper, Cutler said he found himself across the street from a pornography shop he had frequented before his 2023 arrest. He went in, purchased several pornographic DVDs from the shop, and then bought a DVD player from a local Walmart.
“I don’t know whether I would have walked into that porn shop, or not, if I wasn’t in the kind of shape I was in. I would hope that I wouldn’t have. It had been a long time since I slipped,” Cutler said.
Cutler said that May 22 marked his 102nd day in jail for the probation violations, and asked the court to consider releasing him with “time served.”
Cutler said that his time in jail, specifically the three weeks he spent alone in a suicide-watch cell in Portland, gave him time to “do a lot of thinking.”
“I decided that all I wanted to do was get out of jail [and] continue my treatment so that I could restore my self-respect, so that I could justify my family’s faith and support and confidence in me, and so that I could eventually live a real-world life as a recovered—not just recovering, but recovered—addict,” Cutler said. “Well, to do that, you have to be in treatment, and I’ve been out of treatment now for over four months—not just the 102 days in jail, but the days that I was denied the use of the internet. No therapy. No participation in a twelve-step group. Nothing.”
Before allowing Granger to cross-examine Cutler, Larson called both attorneys into his chamber. After emerging shortly before 4 p.m., Larson said he would continue the hearing on June 1.
“I don’t know how much longer this is going to go, and I don’t know that I could make a decision from the bench tonight,” he said.
“In the interim. I’m going to release Mr. Cutler on bail—the same bail that was posted on January 14, 2026,” Larson said.
Cutler, smiling, embraced McKee before being escorted out of the courtroom. He was expected to return to his coastal home in Brooklin later that day, McKee said. Cutler also is due to report to Payson on May 28.
