Physician draws term of 15 years in sex case

 Donald Wayne Lamoureaux
Donald Wayne Lamoureaux

FORT SMITH -- An Arkansas doctor was sentenced in federal court Thursday to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in a sting operation in which he enticed a fictional mother to cross state lines so that he could groom her 4-year-old daughter for sex.

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Donald Wayne Lamoureaux, 69, of Ash Flat pleaded guilty in June before U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III to one count of attempting to coerce and entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.

Lamoureaux's attorney, Rex Chronister of Fort Smith, argued to Holmes on Thursday that 15 years was equal to a life term for his client because of his age and several ailments with which he suffers.

"A life sentence is based on facts, not on what age he is," Holmes responded.

Holmes said he was imposing the 15-year sentence to reflect the serious nature of the offense and to protect the public.

Lamoureaux will be eligible for parole after serving 85 percent, or 12 years and nine months, of his sentence. He would be 81 or 82 years old by then.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Roberts argued that Lamoureaux's sentence should be in the middle to higher end of the federal sentencing guideline range because of the unusual nature of the crime.

Normally, he said, adults who get on the Internet to lure minors to have sex plan for only one encounter. But he said Lamoureaux intended to groom the 4-year-old girl he thought he was meeting to become a long-term sexual servant.

He also pointed out that when arrested, Lamoureaux had a dog collar, leash and pills to maintain an erection.

Lamoureaux, who practiced family medicine in Horseshoe Bend and in Dexter, Mo., was arrested Feb. 6 in a hotel in West Plains, Mo., where he had made arrangements to meet with a Fort Smith undercover police officer who was posing as the mother of the 4-year-old girl.

The officer had made contact with Lamoureaux on an Internet site called Older-For-Younger, and they conversed about him grooming the child for digital penetration and oral sex, then eventually progressing to intercourse by age 9, according to court records.

In one exchange with the undercover officer that was recounted in a government response to Lamoureaux's sentencing memorandum, Lamoureaux revealed he had had sex with another girl for nine years starting at age 10.

The government's response also said Lamoureaux was fired from a position at the White River Medical Center in 2007 after it was discovered that he had thousands of images of child pornography on his private computer that was linked to the medical center's business Internet server.

When interviewed by law enforcement officers, the government's memorandum said, Lamoureaux said he thought the people in the pornographic pictures were actors. No charges were filed against him.

In Lamoureaux's sentencing memorandum, filed Nov. 11, Chronister asked that Lamoureaux be sentenced to 10 years in prison, the lower end of the mandatory sentencing scale. He said in the memorandum that Lamoureaux would be eligible for parole after serving eight years and six months, which would make him 77 at that time.

At that age and under lifetime supervised probation, it was unlikely the public would be in danger of Lamoureaux reoffending, Chronister wrote.

He also wrote in the memorandum that Lamoureaux may not survive his prison term because he suffered from a number of health problems. He listed his client's problems as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, high cholesterol and acid reflux.

The memorandum also said Holmes should take into account in determining Lamoureaux's sentence the 15 years he served in the U.S. Air Force and his service as a doctor for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

NW News on 11/20/2015

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