GUILDERLAND — Quinten T. Francis, 18, of Guilderland — a senior at Guilderland High School — was arrested on April 19 on charges of sexual assault.

Sheriff’s deputies had been called, the day before, to Albany Medical Center, where a 16-year-old girl had gone for treatment of “sexual injuries,” Chief Deputy William M. Rice of the Sheriff’s Office told The Enterprise.

Quentin’s father, Jonathan Francis, a disbarred lawyer, vehemently denies the charges, saying of the girl, “She has committed libel, slander, and defamation of character, and eventually will be held accountable civilly in regard to these false accusations.”

Public defender Jeffrey Richards, who is representing Quinten Francis, said, “All I want to say is that Mr. Francis is a nice, polite young man that has been falsely accused of committing a crime.”

Investigators from the Albany County Sheriff’s Office received a report on April 18 of a sexual assault that had occurred earlier that day on a desolate road in the town of Knox, Rice said.

Investigators were called to the hospital, Rice said, where they interviewed the 16-year-old girl and she identified Francis as the suspect; the two have known one another for several years, police say.

“She’s very credible, and the injuries she sustained back up her story,” Rice said.

The Enterprise withholds names of people police have termed victims of sexual assault.

Reached by phone, the girl’s mother said that she had no comment.

Rice said that the girl and Francis had planned to go to the mall together to meet another friend, but that Francis had instead driven her up the hill to Knox.

Rice could not name the road because, he said, the girl did not know just where it was; investigators plan to take her back to the area to see if she can find it again.

Search warrants were executed, Rice said, including one for the car where the assault was said to have taken place.

The sexual assault charges were brought not because of her age, Rice said, but because of “an act performed on her during the commission of the crime.”

Francis was charged with third-degree criminal sexual act, a felony, and endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor. He was arraigned in the Knox Town Court by Judge James Corgliano and remanded to Albany County’s jail in lieu of $20,000 bail.

The bail was paid and Francis is no longer in custody, Rice said.

The judge issued a complete-stayaway order of protection, Rice said, adding that that is commonly done in cases like this “because of the severity of the charges.”

While speaking with The Enterprise on his cell phone, Jonathan Francis said he was standing outside of Twenty Mall in Guilderland. Every so often he called out loudly to friends or acquaintances passing by that his son was innocent and that the accuser, whom he identified by name, was crazy. He told The Enterprise that he was at Twenty Mall in Guilderland.

Quinten Francis was due in Knox Town Court on April 24 for a preliminary hearing, said a Knox clerk, but that proceeding has been waived out of the local court’s jurisdiction and will be handled by the Albany County Court.

Jonathan Francis told The Enterprise that the 16-year-old girl is also a student at Guilderland High School and that the way the stayaway order is worded — ordering his son to stay away from her school, workplace, and home — will force his son to stay home and be tutored, or transfer to Berne-Knox-Westerlo, with just a month left to go before graduation.

“If he’s presumed innocent, why is he already being punished?” Jonathan Francis asked.

Superintendent Marie Wiles confirmed that the girl is also a student and wrote in an email, “I just want to clarify that at this point it was a judge who decided that Quinten is not to come to school, not the school district.”

Rice said that, if it is true that the wording of the order prevents Quinten Francis from going to school, he can either make arrangements with the district to receive tutoring or can go to Family Court and ask for a modification of the stayaway order.

Quinten Francis has had a troubled home life. His mother, Sherry Francis, told The Enterprise last fall that an addiction to prescription drugs had made it difficult for her to pay her rent, resulting in her being evicted, along with Quinten Francis and his younger brother, from their Altamont apartment. His father, Jonathan Francis, has been arrested on felony charges of witness tampering, for allegedly contacting one of his sons who was planning to testify about a domestic incident; in the original domestic incident, Francis had fought with officers and been tasered, according to police reports.