MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A former WABC sportscaster charged with having sex with a runaway teen he took back to his Times Square apartment pleaded guilty to child endangerment on Tuesday.
Marvell Scott, 38, will serve 20 days community service in exchange for pleading guilty to endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor.
He admitting he engaged in "inappropriate touching" with a girl who he later learned was 14 years old. He did not have to say in court whether sex was involved and has repeatedly denied having sex with the teen.
Prosecutors said the young girl ran away from her upstate home and was talked into briefly working as a prostitute by a local pimp in 2008. It was not until two years later that Scott was arrested and charged with the sex crime after the girl spoke to her parents who went to authorities, the DA said.
But Scott, at the time of his arrest, said he did nothing more than let the young girl into his home to use the bathroom.
"We've maintained since the beginning he was innocent," said Scott's attorney, Benjamin Brafman. "This deal seals that."
Scott, a sports medicine doctor and former sportscaster, was arrested in February 2010 and charged with rape in the second degree, patronizing a prostitute in the third degree and endangering the welfare of a child.
At his arraignment last year, prosecutors said Scott met the alleged victim, her pimp and her 16-year-old friend at 47th and Ninth Avenue one afternoon in June 2008.
They said Scott took the 14-year-old back to his apartment where he had sex with her.
"The [14-year-old] was very scared, very reluctant to go through with the act," Assistant District Attorney Lisa Friel said at his arraignment last year.
