Disgraced WABC-TV sports broadcaster Marvell Scott will serve only 20 days of community service — and eventually get his record wiped clean — after pleading guilty Tuesday to a child prostitution rap.
As part of the plea agreement, Scott, 36, admitted to misdemeanor injuring the welfare of a child in the case, in which the girl offered to him as a prostitute in New York City's Times Square was only 14 years old.
In lieu of jail or probation, Scott will return to court in six months and, providing he has completed his community service, the misdemeanor will be wiped from his record.
Scott was initially charged with statutory rape and patronizing a prostitute.
"On or about June 5, 2008, inside my then-apartment ... I acted in a manner likely to be injurious to the welfare of a child by inappropriately touching her," Scott told a Manhattan Supreme Court judge in taking his plea. "[Afterward] I learned she was 14 years old."
Scott left television last year to be a doctor full-time. Prior to Tuesday he insisted he only let the girl up into his apartment because she was "crying profusely" in the street.
But court papers painted a different scenario in which the girl and her 16-year-old friend — both runaways from Albany, N.Y. — were being pimped by a second man, a stranger who took advantage of them because they had run out of money on the streets and were desperate.
Scott was recorded on video taking the pair up to his apartment. When the terrified child refused to have sex with him, he returned her downstairs to the pimp, where she was coerced by both men and her pal into returning upstairs.
"Mr. Scott has maintained from the very start of this case that he did not commit the serious crime he was originally charged with," defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman said afterward.
"Today's misdemeanor plea and his agreement to perform community service resolves this matter completely and will now permit him to continue his careers in sports medicine and broadcast journalism," Brafman said.
