BENNINGTON — A 15-year-old high school student is facing a felony charge of sexual assault and facing three years to life in prison after police said he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl last year.

Adelbert G. Capen, 15, of Bennington, pleaded innocent to the charge in Bennington criminal court Thursday. He was released without bail but ordered not to be alone with females younger than 18.

In an affidavit, Detective Trooper Scott Dunlap of the Vermont State Police said he was contacted by a supervisor with the Vermont Department for Children and Families. The parents of a 14-year-old girl said they had learned she had sex with a boy in the summer of 2012 through the girl’s postings on a social network website.

A friend to whom the girl reported the sexual contact told the girl she believed it was rape because the girl had told Capen “no.”

The girl was interviewed by Dunlap and Kyle Hoover, an investigator with the Department for Children and Families, on Dec. 6.

She told the investigators she and Capen had sexual contact three or four times consensually, but she said the first time they had sex, she had told him to stop at least twice. According to the girl, she had to push Capen away to stop the sexual contact.

The girl told Dunlap that she didn’t think what happened was “bad” until she told friends about it who told her that she had been raped. She said she understood that to mean “this guy did something to her that she did not want to do, but he did it anyway.”

Dunlap and Hoover interviewed Capen on Jan. 9 at his home with his mother and family friends present.

According to the affidavit, Capen admitted he had sexual contact with the girl and continued even after she said no at least twice.

Dunlap said Capen said he hadn’t stopped because he was “in the moment” but later said “if he could take that day back, then he would have.”

The affidavit said both Capen and the girl were ninth-graders at Mount Anthony Union High School. Judge Cortland Corsones told Capen that even if he had contact with fellow students in a classroom, a teacher had to be present.

A competency and sanity evaluation of Capen was ordered by the court.

patrick.mcardle@rutlandherald.com