A Boston doctor avoided going to trial by admitting to a judge Wednesday that he traveled to Alaska in 2008 with the intention of having sex with a 6-year-old boy.
By MARY PEMBERTON, Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A Boston doctor avoided going to trial by admitting to a judge Wednesday that he traveled to Alaska in 2008 with the intention of having sex with a 6-year-old boy.
John Mark Felton, a 47-year-old research physician, was to be tried Monday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. He decided instead to plead guilty as part of a plea agreement.
Felton pleaded guilty to traveling to Anchorage on Nov. 16, 2009, to engage in illicit sexual conduct. At sentencing on Sept. 13, he is expected to get between 20 and 30 years in prison. If convicted of the original charge, he could have received a sentence of life in prison.
Prosecutors say Felton was in a child-sex chat room on Feb. 28, 2008, when he began conversing with a man who he believed was offering up his young grandson for sex. He told the man — actually an undercover agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — that he would travel to Alaska to have sex with the boy.
When Felton was arrested at the Anchorage airport, he had in his luggage and a Spiderman child's costume.
Special Agent Kevin Laws, who posed as the man offering his grandson, asked Felton if there was anything that he should be worried about. Felton responded, "nope, very clean, healthy and discreet, not into anything nasty. Just really into kids."
Felton — who at the time lived in a luxury condo in Boston's exclusive Back Bay neighborhood and was vice president of clinical operations at a vaccine development company in nearby Cambridge, Mass., — waited nearly a year and a half before reaching out to the man again. The trip was planned in emails over the next few weeks.
Felton, who at times trembled in his chair while seated next to his lawyer, was asked Wednesday during the change of plea hearing if the facts of the government's case against him were true.
"Ah, yes," he told U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline.
According to court documents, Felton told officers that he didn't pay Kirby any money or provide him with financial information for payment, but that he brought a kid's costume and condoms. He told agents that sleeping pills in his suitcase were not for the boy, but were for Kirby if the encounter went badly.
He also told officers that his chats on the computer were different than "the real world" and he hadn't been with children before, documents say.
Agents found a silver suitcase in Felton's Boston home that contained child pornography DVDs.
Felton, a British national who moved to Boston in 2008, will have to register as a sex offender and will most certainly be deported when he is released from prison. He will have to serve his term, less any good time credits, because there is no parole in the federal system.
Beistline indicated that he would probably accept the plea agreement and go with a sentence of between 20 and 30 years. That means Felton could be more than 70 when released.
"That is a long sentence," said his lawyer, Steven Wells. "He has lost everything."