Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:12:56 EDT
Bail Denied for Lawyer Charged With Paying Underaged Girls for Sex
Samuel Maull
The Associated Press
10-02-2006
A Manhattan judge refused to set bail Thursday for a lawyer who fled to Canada and was captured later in an East Village hotel after he was accused of paying underaged girls for sex.
State Supreme Court Justice Daniel FitzGerald denied a bail motion filed by lawyers for James Colliton, 43. The judge ordered him to remain in jail without bail, saying he would not risk freeing someone who had already tried to flee.
"This defendant ran, tried to hide," the judge said. "I cannot release someone who could potentially run again. Defendant will stay on remand status."
FitzGerald let Colliton sign a document that allowed the district attorney's office to release to his wife Grace nearly $10,000 cash, taken from him by police when they arrested him at the St. Marks Hotel on March 3.
The judge set Nov. 30 for Colliton's next court date.
Colliton, a lawyer formerly at the prestigious Manhattan firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, has pleaded not guilty to a 43-count indictment charging him with third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy and patronizing a prostitute.
He is accused of having sex with two underage sisters with their mother's approval and of having sex with a third minor girl, not related to the other two. Prosecutors say all of the girls were younger than 17, New York's age of consent.
The defendant, who has a wife and five children in Poughkeepsie, faces up to four years in prison if convicted on any of the rape or sodomy counts.
The 38-year-old mother of the two sisters pleaded guilty in April to endangering the welfare of a child. She admitted that she allowed her girls to have sex with Colliton and knew he was giving them money and gifts.
The mother, whose name was withheld to protect her daughters' identities, also admitted she received money from her daughters and that she had asked Colliton for money directly. She told the court that one girl was just 13 when she began virtually living at Colliton's East 57th Street apartment in 2004.
Assistant District Attorney Rachel Hochhauser said the third girl was 15 when she began having sex with Colliton.
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