A University employee was charged by the FBI with child sex abuse June 24 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Frank Lombard, 42, associate director for the Health Inequalities Program at the Center for Heath Policy, is charged with enticing an undercover police officer over the Internet to take part in interstate travel in order to engage in an illegal sex act with a minor during a sting conducted by the FBI and Metropolitan Police Department for the District of Columbia's Child Exploitation Task Force, according to a news release from the FBI. According to The (Raleigh) News & Observer, Lombard waived an extradition hearing June 26 and was held without bond in the Durham County Jail until his extradition to Washington, D.C. this week.
The FBI declined to give further comment on a pending investigation.
Lombard has been placed on unpaid administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigation, said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. He added that the University is cooperating with the investigation.
According to Detective Timothy Palchak's affidavit, a confidential informant told the FBI he had knowledge of people engaged in child molestation online. The report said the criminal prosecution against the informant is still pending, but no plea deal was reached in exchange for the information.
The informant told investigators that a customer of ICUii-an online program that offers "adult, discreet videochat," according to the company's Web site-with the user name "cooper2" or "cooperse" had performed acts of child molestation and broadcast it over the Web site. A subpoena sent to ICUii June 15 confirmed that the "cooper2" user name identified by the informant belonged to Frank Lombard, according to the affidavit.
After the sting operation began, the officer alleges that over the course of a Yahoo! Instant Messenger conversation June 23, Lombard-using the display name "F L"-confessed to multiple acts of sexual abuse online using the ICUii video chat program. Lombard identified the minor he had molested as his 5-year-old, black adopted child.
Lombard also offered to allow the undercover officer to watch him perform sexual acts on the child via ICUii and fly to Lombard's home to have sex with the child himself, according to the affidavit.
"He further told your affiant that he lived in Durham, North Carolina with his live-in homosexual partner," Palchak wrote in his affidavit. He went on to write that "F L" said his partner did not know about the abuse, but when his partner leaves for an upcoming business trip, it "would allow him the ability to molest the child just as he did the last time the partner had left town."
Lombard has been employed at Duke for 10 years. In addition to his responsibilities at the Center for Health Policy, Lombard taught an undergraduate course in the public policy department-"Intro to the U.S. Health Care System"-in the past and was scheduled to do so Fall 2009.
Students described Lombard as a good teacher and someone who knew a large amount about the subject he was teaching, although they said they were not close to him outside the classroom.
"He was definitely very knowledgeable on the topic we were covering in class and I can't say much bad about him as a professor," senior Bryan Fox said. "He was a great teacher."
Multiple colleagues of Lombard declined to comment for this story.
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