A former security officer for Franklin District Court went to trial yesterday on charges that he offered a Franklin couple $20 an hour to have sex with each other while he watched. Robert Theriault, 49, convinced the pair they would be testing bed sheets and condoms as part of an insurance company survey, a prosecutor told jurors.

The couple, who are 27 and 29, said they agreed to Theriault's alleged offer because they needed money for a court fine. They were skeptical that he was "testing" sheets to see if they increased sperm count, they said, but ultimately trusted Theriault because he worked for the court. They told jurors they even asked him to film them having sex because they wanted a video of themselves.

Theriault, of West Ossipee, who resigned from his job after he was accused in December 2005, is charged with six counts of prostitution because New Hampshire law makes it illegal to offer someone money to have sex. That's been the case since 1993, when the Legislature rewrote the prostitution law to reach not only prostitutes but anyone paying for sex.

Theriault's public defender, Donna Brown, had tried to get the charges dismissed prior to trial by arguing that the prostitution law is illegal because it criminalizes permissible sexual contact like that allowed in movies. She lost that argument, although Judge Carol Ann Conboy said Theriault's alleged conduct would be legal if it were not done for sexual gratification. Yesterday, however, Brown indicated she will argue that Theriault has been wrongly accused.

The couple have credibility problems, Brown said: The man has a criminal record that includes theft and burglary, and the woman does not have custody of her two children, ages 8 and 9. And they don't remember their interactions with Theriault quite the same.

"This case will come down to (the alleged victims') testimony," Brown said during opening statements in Merrimack County Superior Court. "Is it reliable and believable? You have your own common sense, and you can apply that."

The couple reported Theriault in 2006, after they read news accounts about another man who had accused Theriault of offering him money if he could watch that man and the man's girlfriend have sex. Theriault is scheduled to go to trial on that man's allegation separately, although jurors in this case do not know about the other charge.

After reading the news account of the first accusation, the pair, who have dated for five years and are now engaged, reported that something similar had happened to them months earlier, in November 2005. They said they met Theriault in late October of that year when they were in court on the man's unpaid speeding fine. Theriault, realizing the man was having trouble paying his fine, allegedly approached the woman in court and said he had a job for them that paid $20 an hour, according to prosecutor Wayne Coull of the Merrimack County Attorney's office.

The couple, who testified yesterday, told jurors they gave Theriault their address at a Franklin motel where they'd been living but got no details about the job offer. They were desperate for money, they said, because neither was working and they were living off the roughly $500 she received in disability each month.

Theriault came to their motel room the next day and explained his offer, the couple testified. The man said he thought Theriault arrived in a brown bailiff's uniform, although court security officers in district court wear blue suit jackets, not brown uniforms. The woman thought Theriault was wearing the gun he wore in court.

According to the couple, Theriault explained that he worked for an insurance company that was testing two products: sheets and condoms. He said he needed to see if having sex on a set of special sheets increased sperm count, the couple said. Theriault said he needed to test the condoms' success rate.

And Theriault said he'd have to stay in the room during the sex to verify the survey, the couple said.

"At first I thought it was a joke," the man said. "But every time I asked a question about it, he was right there with a response. So I began to think he was telling the truth."

Something else about Theriault's offer interested the man. In addition to helping the couple with the man's $500 court fine, Theriault also offered to take care of the man's community service obligation with the court, the man said. He said he considered it a "great deal" that Theriault would say he did his community service even if he hadn't.

"If he were not a court security officer, I would not have believed him," the man testified.

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