NEWPORT – A 55-year-old former Claremont resident, previously indicted for a pattern of sexual assault dating back decades, is now facing an additional felony charge of abusing another alleged victim when she was a child.
On Oct. 28, a Sullivan County grand jury indicted Lance Simons on an additional count of aggravated felonious sexual assault – pattern sexual assault two months after he was previously indicted on three counts of the same offense along with one count of aggravated felonious sexual assault – use of force/violence.
He remains incarcerated at Sullivan County Jail in Unity.
In the latest felony indictment, he is alleged to have sexually abused a woman, now in her late 20s, when she was between 9 and 11 years old.
Court records show that Simons was charged in 2009 with felonious sexual assault stemming from 2008, the year police say the woman had previously made allegations against him. However, prosecutors dropped the case in 2010.
Each charge carries a potential penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $4,000.
Claremont Police Detective Michelle Dunning interviewed the alleged victim in April as part of the department’s months-long investigation into Simons, which resulted in his May arrest in Morgan, Vt.
The woman told police that her family moved away a few years “after the incident in 2008,” according to a probable cause affidavit filed in May. According to Simons’ latest indictment, his alleged pattern of sexual assault against her occurred between January 2007 and December 2008.
She told police, according to the affidavit, that she was “unsure of how many times she was assaulted by [Simons],” and said she was “11 years old when she realized that what was happening was not okay.”
She also told police that “when she had come forward originally, she was warned that going forward with a trial without a lot of evidence would be really hard and she felt that the situation was already hard,” the affidavit states.
In the years following the alleged pattern of sexual assault, the woman told police that “her mom decided the best thing was to get her away from New Hampshire,” according to the affidavit.
“(The alleged victim) … stated that she would be willing to testify in this matter if needed,” Dunning wrote in the affidavit. “(She) is incredibly upset that there are more victims and feels that she owes it to herself and to these other survivors to be bold after all these years.”
Simons’ alleged pattern of sexual assault dates back as far as 1999 and as recently as 2020, when he was living in Claremont, the state alleges.
The August indictments on four felony counts of sexual assault were connected to two other alleged victims. The woman is one of at least six alleged victims, some with disabilities, identified by the Claremont Police investigation.
Simons pleaded not guilty to those charges in September, the Valley News previously reported. Judge James Kennedy denied him bail at the time.
The four felonies are pending in two separate dockets that are scheduled for a final pretrial hearing in March 2027, after a judge canceled a dispositional conference in October at the request of the defense, with the state’s assent, so they could move ahead and schedule a trial.
Another arraignment and bail hearing for the additional felony charge of pattern sexual assault is scheduled for Nov. 16 at 9 a.m. in Sullivan Superior Court. He has not yet entered a plea on that charge.
Phone efforts to reach Simons’ defense attorney, Richard Guerriero of Keene, N.H.-based law firm Lothstein Guerriero, and the prosecutor, Sullivan County Attorney Christine Hilliard, were not immediately successful on Thursday.
