Neil Offen at the Herald Sun reports that alleged sex offender and Duke University employee Frank Lombard ^[1] may be preparing for a plea agreement ^[2]:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office will file an “information” today in Washington, D.C., District Court against Lombard, charging him with sexual exploitation of a minor. The filing of an information is a legal maneuver by the prosecution that is an alternative to a grand jury indictment, “with the defendant agreeing to be charged by information,” said Ben Friedman, a spokesman for the attorney’s office in the nation’s capital.

The filing of an information, since it implies the defendant’s acceptance of guilt, typically means that a plea agreement is imminent. The one-page information that Lombard will acknowledge today states that he forced a minor to “engage in sexually explicit conduct … for the purpose of transmitting a live visual depiction of such conduct.”

Lombard was the “associate director of the university’s Health Inequalities Program and a Duke employee for 10 years,” according to Offen; he allegedly invited an investigator to come molest his adopted five-year-old, African-American son while his male partner was out of town, telling the undercover agent that he had repeatedly abused the child himself.

Lombard lived at the Eno Commons ^[3] commune.

Given the sensitive nature of this case, I’ll let those interested in details read the affidavit ^[4] themselves. (Warning: the attached pdf contains sexually explicit content).

Bethany Stotts is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia ^[5].