DETROIT – Former Detroit City Council president Charles Pugh learned how much time he faces in prison on Wednesday.
Pugh pleaded guilty this past month to third-degree criminal sexual conduct. According to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, the former Detroit leader engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior with a 14-year-old boy in 2003 when Pugh was a reporter and anchor at WJBK-TV.
Pugh was sentenced Wednesday to 5 1/2 to 15 years in prison. He must also register as a sex offender.
"You worked as an anchor at a major television station in metropolitan Detroit that the public believed in and listened to," Judge Thomas Cameron said. "When there was a case of a public official who abused their position of trust of someone who committed sexual assault on a minor, you or your station was there to report on it. What the public didn't know was that at the same time that you were reporting on these offenses and violations of the public trust, you were committing these same crimes yourself."
READ: Charles Pugh's damaging fall from grace
The two met when the then-teen inquired about an internship at the television station. The boy didn’t intern at the station but was invited to Pugh’s Detroit apartment several times, and the two had contact by phone and text messages, prosecutors said. The complainant is now 27 years old.
Pugh, 45, could face a sentence of 5 and 1/2 to 15 years in prison. The plea deal helped Pugh avoid a possible life sentence.
He originally was charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was arrested this summer in New York, where he has lived since 2013. He is being lodged at the Wayne County Jail. His bail was set at $500,000 cash. His trial would have been Nov. 7.
Pugh was arrested in New York and extradited back to Michigan, where he was arraigned in Wayne County.
It is alleged that Pugh had inappropriate sexual contact with the complainant at his home in Detroit from September 2003 through May 2004,” the prosecutor’s office said. “The complainant was 14 and 15 years of age at the time of the alleged contact. The specific facts and evidence in the case will be presented in court at the preliminary examination.”
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