A longtime campaign worker for Executive Councilor Ray Burton is a convicted sex offender who was arrested again in Concord this week for contact with teenage boys.

Burton, a Republican from Bath, said he knew about Mark Seidensticker's past offense while he used him for campaign work for more than a decade. Last year, law enforcement officials forbade Seidensticker to have unsupervised contact with minors. Burton said he exercised strict personal supervision over Seidensticker during campaign events.

Seidensticker, 45, of East Side Drive in Concord and Ogunquit, Maine, was convicted of attempted sexual assault in 1992 for grabbing a 17-year-old boy from behind while pressing his genitals against the boy's back.

LORI DUFF / Monitor file photo Mark Seidensticker (right) stands next to Executive Councilor Ray Burton (with hat) and Congressman Charlie Bass (pointing) during a day that Bass and Burton spent campaigning together in Bass’s antique Model T Ford on Oct. 2 last year. Zoom Purchase Photos Online

Seidensticker, a Concord native, had picked up the boy and the boy's 16-year-old friend on Main Street in Concord and driven them to the woods behind Broken Ground School to "listen to some music,"according to a police affidavit. When the two boys tried to run, Seidensticker grabbed one and tried to put him in a headlock, according to the affidavit. One of the boys hit Seidensticker with a stick, and both boys ran.

Seidensticker pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault and received two years' probation, an order to get counseling and a suspended 12-month sentence. The conviction required Seidensticker to register as a sex offender for 10 years, but he has been convicted at least three times of violating that requirement. He was convicted in Littleton District Court in 1998 and twice in York, Maine, in 2002 and 2004.

It was last year that a judge forbade Seidensticker to have unsupervised contact with minors for one year.

This week, Seidensticker was accused anew of inappropriate contact with minors.

According to a Concord police report, Seidensticker approached three teenagers, two boys and a girl, at around 10:30 Monday night as they walked home from Store 24.

Seidensticker pulled alongside the 14-year-old boy, who was apart from the other two, and asked him about going back to school and then about getting drunk and partying, according to a police report. Seidensticker offered the boy a cigarette, which the boy accepted through the passenger window. When the boy became nervous, Seidensticker told him to "leave his friends out of it (and) that he only wanted to talk to him," the police report said.

The boy declined when Seidensticker offered him a beer but then accepted it when Seidensticker pulled into a parking lot and produced a beer, the report said. When the teenagers returned home, they reported the incident to an adult, who called the police.

Officers found Seidensticker driving on South Street. In his car, they found the beer and cooler the teenagers had described as well as KY Jelly, blankets, several lengths of rope, and tape, according to a police report.

Seidensticker was charged with prohibited sales of alcoholic beverages and sale and distribution of tobacco to a minor for allegedly giving the 14-year-old a beer and a cigarette. He pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday and was being held on $50,000 cash bail at the Boscawen jail. He could not be reached for comment.

He is scheduled to go to trial in Concord District Court on Nov. 7.

Seidensticker has worked on Burton's political campaigns since the early 1990s. In an interview yesterday, Burton said he would not allow Seidensticker to work on any future campaign. Burton couldn't say precisely how long he had known Seidensticker or how the two met.

"He's been on and off through the years," Burton said.

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