My Lawyers In Maine Were Not Working For Me

My Lawyers Were Not Working for Me

I need to be clear about this part of my story. It is not only a memory — it is documentation. This is evidence of what happened to me in Maine.

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The Camden Meeting

In Camden, Knox County, I met with Steve Cohen and Laura Shaw. They were supposed to be my lawyers. They were supposed to defend me. Instead, they pressured me to plead guilty to a crime I had not committed.

Steve Cohen — a man with a history of domestic violence, who had barely held on to his law license — sat across from me after I had already paid him five thousand dollars. His advice was blunt: I didn’t have a chance. I should just plead guilty.

Guilty to what? To stalking.

But I wasn’t stalking anyone. The “instances” they referred to were emails I had been forced to send under duress. I asked the obvious: Isn’t there a definition of stalking in the law?

His answer: No. There isn’t.

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The Statute Itself

That was a lie.

Maine’s Stalking statute is 17-A § 210-A. It clearly defines stalking as a “course of conduct” directed at a specific person that would cause fear of bodily injury, death, property damage, or serious emotional distress. It lays out multiple elements. None of them applied to me.

There is also 17-A § 210-C, “Domestic Violence Stalking.” It builds on § 210-A. It doesn’t redefine stalking — it says if the alleged victim is a family, household member, or dating partner, then the same conduct becomes domestic violence stalking.

In other words: the only definitions live in § 210-A.

And yet, I was being told I was facing “Stalking II” — a charge that supposedly required a conviction for “Stalking I” first. They insisted there was no definition of stalking under that version, which left me unable to even contest the accusation on its face.

It was framing.

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What I Realized Too Late

At the time, I thought Steve Cohen was just incompetent, or lazy, or a bully. But later, I understood: these lawyers were not working for me. They were managing me. They were steering me toward a plea that would tidy up the system’s paperwork, at the cost of my innocence.

I wanted out of Knox County. I wanted to get it over with. But I also knew I was innocent. I was not stalking anyone. The fact that my own lawyers told me otherwise, and told me to plead guilty, is proof that I was never given a fair defense.

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Why I Am Writing This

I am publishing this as part of my ongoing documentation.

Because how many other women have been coached into confessing, told “you don’t have a chance,” told “there’s no definition,” when the statute says otherwise? How many other people have been railroaded by lawyers who are supposed to protect them?

I want the record to be clear:

I was accused of stalking under a charge that didn’t even line up with the statutory definitions.

I was pressured by my own counsel to plead guilty despite being innocent.

The Maine statute itself shows the definitions that my lawyers denied even existed.

This is not just a bad experience. It is evidence of systemic failure.

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Listen for Yourself

See above

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Transcript of the Camden Meeting

(Below is the transcript of the audio recording, broken into timestamps. Key lines are highlighted in bold for clarity.)

So we left off in the story where I was meeting with Steve Cohen and Lars Shaw, supposedly my lawyers, in Camden. This meeting was crazy, right? So Steve Cohen, as I said, was not someone I really would have hired. But Laura insisted that he was great. He had beaten his wife and gone to jail and had barely kept his law license. But at this point, I'd already paid him five thousand dollars. And so, you know, so I'm in Knox county, and in this crazy meeting, Steve is telling me I don't have a chance and that we just need to plead guilty. And I was like, but I'm not stalking this guy. I'm not stalking him. How can I. How can that be, you know, considered? How am I guilty of it if I'm not even doing it? And he kept saying, well, there's so many instances. And the instances were all just emails that I had been forced to send. And I said, well, but isn't there a definition in this, you know, statute of what stalking is?

And he said, no, there isn't. There's no definition of stalking. I was like, that's weird. And of course, later on, I found out they were framing me for stalking. Two in stalking, one, which you have to be found guilty of to be found guilty of stalking two, there is many definitions of stalking, none of which I was doing. So clearly, these lawyers that I was paying were not working for me at the time. I. I didn't know that. I mean, I knew Steve Comb was a dick, but, you know, I just wanted to get the hell out of Knox County. I wanted to get this over with. I want. I'm innocent. I wanted to, you know, but if I needed to plead guilty to just get the. Out of Knox county, okay.

01:30 – End (~1:50)

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Resource Notes

Maine statute 17-A § 210-A (Stalking): Defines stalking in multiple ways — all requiring fear, distress, or harm.

Maine statute 17-A § 210-C (Domestic Violence Stalking): Uses the same definitions, limited to family/household/dating relationships.

Payment record: $5,000 paid to Steve Cohen for representation.

Audio recording: Meeting in Camden with Steve Cohen and Laura Shaw, in which guilty plea pressure occurred.

Emails cited as “instances”: Messages I was forced to send, later mischaracterized as stalking.

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💡 This post is one piece of a larger archive. I will continue publishing the documents, recordings, and statutes that show exactly what happened to me in Maine.