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Doc admits 'terrible mistake'
Maurice Wolin will be spending two months in home confinement after pleading no contest to lewd acts with a minor.
PD FIlePublished: Friday, March 12, 2010 at 4:28 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, March 12, 2010 at 4:28 p.m.
Maurice Wolin, whose fall from acclaimed East Bay cancer doctor to child-sex predator was captured on national TV, said Friday he made a "terrible mistake" that shattered his family and cost him his career.
Although Wolin, 52, still questions the tactics used in the Petaluma sting aired on the NBC "Dateline" series, "To Catch a Predator," he said he hopes someday he can put it all behind him.
"It's clear that this was a mistake on my part," said Wolin in a telephone interview, two days after his sentencing for attempted lewd acts on a child under 14 that will result in two months of home confinement. "I hurt my family. I hurt my friends. I am aware of that."
Wolin was one of more than a dozen men who were arrested in August 2006 in an online probe coordinated with the group "Perverted Justice." After chatting online for three days with a decoy Wolin thought was a 13-year-old girl, he drove to Petaluma for sex and was arrested instead.
After nearly three years of legal wrangling, which included disputes about evidence, Wolin in December pleaded no contest in exchange for an agreement he wouldn't be sent to prison. His sentence includes a requirement that he register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
On Friday, Wolin said he gave in because NBC was going to make a documentary of his trial and he didn't want to subject his family to additional exposure. He called “Perverted Justice” an unmonitored vigilante group and accused the network of making “an enormous amount of money off this, off me.”
A network spokeswoman said NBC news had no plans to cover the trial.
Wolin said he has been separated from his wife, also a physician, since his arrest and shares legal custody of their two daughters, ages seven and 10. He was forced by child-protective services to move out of their home in Piedmont and has relocated to an Emeryville apartment.
Wolin, who received his medical degree in New York and was a
Wolin is unemployed and living off savings he told probation officials could last another year. His conviction, he said, doesn't close the door on future employment since he was working in research. His resume includes being former director of a center for bone marrow and stem cell transplantation, studying AIDS treatment and running his own consulting business.
During the past three years, he did some grant writing for a childrens' hospital, according to the probation report provided to the court before his sentencing.
"I worked 30 years in my career," Wolin said. "I never harmed anybody."
Wolin wouldn't discuss details of the case. His lawyer, Blair Berk of Los Angeles, said he maintains his innocence under his no contest plea.
Petaluma investigators said that Wolin was contacted by a decoy in a Yahoo chat room Aug. 24, 2006 and the two talked about having sex over the course of three days. Wolin, who went by the moniker “talldreamy_doc,” asked the decoy if she liked older men and cautioned her against telling her parents about the chats, according to the probation report.
“I'm horny for you,” the report quoted Wolin as saying.
On Aug. 26, Wolin informed the decoy he was coming to Petaluma. He arrived at a tract home used in the operation, walked into the backyard and then tried to flee when he saw cameras. His arrest was recorded on video.
Wolin, who had no prior record, told officers the decoy begged him to come and that he was concerned for her welfare.
But prosecutors said it was clear that Wolin wanted to have sex with a child and that he engaged in sexual banter even as he was commenting on the decoy's age.
Despite that, the probation report concluded prison was not warranted. He was identified as a medium-to-low risk for being charged again for a new sex offense and was an "upstanding medical professional" who has been in counseling.
Today, Wolin says he was in "no way interested in anyone underage." He discovered online chat rooms during a time of his life marked by death and sadness. His mother and best friend's wife had just died of cancer and Web sites offered a diversion, he said.
Wolin will serve a two-month jail sentence in his home with an electronic monitoring device. He said he will try to put his life and family back together.
"The Internet was a dysfunctional escape," Wolin said."It was a rough period of my life."
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