noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646
DURHAM -- Federal prosecutors are negotiating a plea deal with the former Duke University administrator charged with soliciting adults over the Internet to have sex with his 5-year-old adopted son.
"We have said that in open court, that we are involved in discussing a plea agreement," said Ben Friedman, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. "That doesn't mean there will be a successful resolution to the discussions, but they are ongoing, they have been happening."
Friedman emphasized, however, that the negotiation process was still in its early stages.
"There are a whole series of events that have to happen before things would get resolved," he said.
Frank Lombard has been held in the Washington, D.C., jail without bond since his arrest June 24 in Durham for sex offense with a child and persuading someone to cross state lines for illegal sexual activity. If convicted on the charges, he could face up to 20 years in prison.
Friedman said that typically in negotiations for a plea agreement in such a case the defendant would be required to plead guilty to the lead charge and accept responsibility for the crime.
"If that happens, in such an agreement, the prison time then could be lowered," Friedman said.
Keith Becker, the federal prosecutor in the case, would not comment Monday on the details of the negotiations. He did say, though, that Lombard's next day in U.S. District Court would be Nov. 10. The court appearance would be to update all sides on the status of the case.
Christopher Shella, Lombard's lawyer, did not respond Monday to a request for comment on the case.
Lombard, who worked at Duke for 10 years, was associate director for the university's Health Inequalities Program. Duke initially put him on unpaid administrative leave after the arrest and then severed all ties with him in mid-July.
His arrest came following an elaborate sting operation that included the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Bureau of Investigation and an Internet Crime Task Force as well as police in both Durham and Washington.
The undercover investigation began when a confidential source told a Washington police officer that he had been in contact via an Internet-based video chat program with an individual who had been sexually molesting a child and broadcasting that molestation using a Webcam. Police said they discovered the account holder for the video chat program was Lombard, who also fit a physical description given by the confidential source.
According to the arrest warrant, Lombard allegedly told an undercover police officer that he had sexually molested the child himself multiple times.
The warrant said Lombard invited the undercover officer to fly to Durham in June to have sexual contact with the child and that "there would be no limits on the sexual activity he could engage in."
The child involved in the alleged crimes was one of two adopted children in Lombard's home, which he shared with a live-in partner who did not participate in the abuse, according to the affidavit. The affidavit did not say whether the other child, whose age was not revealed, was abused. It also did not say how long the abuse of the 5-year-old went on.
