A hearing tomorrow could determine whether a former Penn professor and convicted felon will be allowed to remain in Italy even though he hasn't served out his original sentence.
Tracy McIntosh -- once the director of Penn's Head Injury Center -- left the country on Saturday to take a research post in Milan, Italy.
Last year, he pled no contest to and was convicted of sexual assault and drug charges for having non-consensual sex with a 23-year-old woman in his Hayden Hall office in 2002 while the two were under the influence of marijuana.
He was sentenced to 11 and a half to 23 months of house arrest in his Media, Pa., home in March, approximately 11 months ago.
The district attorney's office hopes that tomorrow's hearing will require McIntosh to return to Philadelphia.
In a statement released on Friday, Philadelphia DA Lynn Abraham -- who led the original prosecution against McIntosh -- declared her "outrage" against Judge Rayford Means' decision to allow McIntosh to leave his home and the nation.
"Our victim is crushed by [these] events, which make a mockery of her and of all victims of sexual assault who are brave enough to come forward in hopes of getting justice," Abraham said. "Instead, this sex offender gets no jail, no prison, no custody. It is no wonder that women don't come forward" more often.
She declined to comment further.
At the time of McIntosh's trial, the prosecution submitted a memo documenting the complaints of several young women who brought their cases to the University, alleging inappropriate behavior exhibited by McIntosh in his lab.
But, according to Thomas Bergstrom, McIntosh's attorney, he has paid $4,300 in restitution, completed his period of house arrest to the satisfaction of the judge and served 834 hours of community service.
When McIntosh was sentenced, he was also fined $20,000 and an additional sum to cover the victim's psychological therapy.
Bergstrom added that the research job in Italy will fill in the hiatus between now and September, when McIntosh will "hopefully" get a job in New Jersey.
"He needs to earn a living, he needs to feed his family, and he needs to pay restitution," Bergstrom said.
Bergstrom said that his client's job in Italy is "the only one he could get."
Means had not responded to calls by press time.
When asked how McIntosh felt about the continued media coverage of this case, Bergstrom expressed his frustration at the "defaming" of his client.
McIntosh "has owned up to what he did," Bergstrom said. "The media has been unfair to him because they have continued to insinuate that this is a rape case, that he is a predator and that he is a danger to the community -- none of which is true."
