PARIS — A Bryant Pond man was found guilty Tuesday in Oxford County Superior Court of sexually assaulting a friend while she was sleeping.

A jury found Spencer T. Glover, 30, guilty of gross sexual assault, Class B. His sentencing was continued until late July or August.

Family members of the victim and Glover shed tears as the jury foreman read the verdict. The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for about an hour before reaching the verdict.

Glover had said he and the woman engaged in consensual sex that she initiated. She said she had passed out and woke up to find Glover having sex with her.

During his cross-examination of Glover, Assistant District Attorney Joseph O’Connor played a recorded conversation between the woman and Glover in which he denied to her that he’d had sex with her. “Do you really think I’d do something like that?” he was heard asking her on the tape.

O’Connor questioned why Glover would lie about having sex if it had been a consensual encounter. “What’s to be scared of it that’s the truth?” he asked Glover.

Glover said he initially lied to the woman and to Oxford County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Matthew Noyes, because he knew he’d been accused of rape and was scared.

O’Connor said Glover changed his story when evidence showed he’d had sex with the victim. “It was the only thing left for him to say,” O’Connor said of Glover’s claim that the sex was consensual.

In January 2011, Glover was at a bar with the victim and several other friends. Before closing time they went to his former home in Bethel and drank more. The victim had planned to go home but drank too much to drive.

Glover and another partygoer helped her upstairs to a spare bedroom. After others left or went to bed, Glover entered the bedroom. The woman said she woke up to Glover having sex with her. Glover claimed she was awake when he entered the room and initiated sex with him.

However, in the days after the incident, Glover denied having any sexual contact with the woman that night. He denied it in a private phone conversation with her a few days later, not realizing that she was recording him. On the recording, he was heard denying that he had sex with her that night. He also denied it in an interview with Noyes.

After the assault, the woman reported what happened. A sexual assault evidence collection was administered, and investigators from the Maine State Police Crime Lab determined that evidence collected from the woman included Glover’s sperm. Several investigators testified on the testing procedure.

O’Connor asked that Glover be held without bail pending sentencing for the safety of the victim. Glover’s attorney, Ron Hoffman, said there was no evidence his client threatened the victim.

Glover was released pending sentencing, with the conditions that he not contact the victim, her family and a friend of the victim.

treaves@sunjournal.com