Last February former WABC sportscaster Marvell Scott said that charges he had raped a 14-year-old girl three years ago were false and that he would be "vindicated in court." And technically he was. Today Scott pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor of child endangerment, admitting that he inappropriately touched the girl but still maintaining that he only learned her age later. Still, in exchange for his plea the sports doctor has been sentenced to 20 days of community service with no jail time.
Scott's lawyers seemed quite happy with the way things went out, and put out a statement to that effect saying, "Mr. Scott has maintained from the very start of this case that he did not commit the serious crime he was originally charged with."
Scott previously insisted that he only took the young girl into his Times Square apartment because "one of the girls was crying profusely. She was obviously in great distress. I’m, in the medical profession, for me if you stop on the street and see someone in distress, it is not uncommon to try and find out what is going on." Whatever he said though, until recently prosecutors continued to argue that the situation was far grimmer—A Manhattan Supreme Court Justice wrote in a June 20 decision that Scott "had sexual intercourse with the 14-year-old complainant on the bed in his bedroom while the older teen stood looking out the window in the same room." In other documents the older girl said she could hear Scott saying "Just a little more; just a little more," to the younger girl—but in the end Scott seems to have lived up to his name and avoided the more serious charges of statutory rape and patronizing a prostitute. He could have faced up to seven years in prison if convicted at trial of felony rape charges.
