Lehigh University official and former Penn employee Steven Devlin was arrested last Tuesday for allegedly soliciting sex withpeople he thought were a mother and her two daughters, aged 7 and 9.
Devlin, 49, was charged with criminal attempt to commit rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and aggravated indecent assault. He was held in the George W. Hill Correctional Center before being released on $250,000 bail, said Joseph Brielmann, chief prosecutor for the office's Special Victims Unit.
Det. Lisa Carroll from the district attorney's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force arrested Devlin after luring him to a parking lot in Springfield. The undercover detective posed as a mother offering her two daughters for sex, and had developed an online relationship with Devlin since May, Brielmann said.
Officials said that Devlin began communicating with the undercover detective May 24, from his office computer in Lehigh under the screen name Phillyguy5. According to his criminal complaint, Devlin chatted with the detective about past sexual experiences with "two girls and their mom" in the "mountains."
"Meeting other families like ours is always risky, risky," Devlin said, according to the affidavit. "But it is also so exciting."
Devlin also allegedly described the sexual experiences he would have with the mother and her daughters, to the undercover detective.
"We get there ad girls run upstairs to change, your follow, they come back in tshirts and nothing else . the adults are naked already, your girls sit next to me," he wrote, using the incorrect spellings, according to the affidavit. Devlin allegedly went on to explicitly describe the sexual acts he would perform with the girls.
"We need to set a date to party," he said at the end of the conversation.
In June, detectives received subscriber information from AOL, which identified Phillyguy5 as Steven Devlin from Media. Police later discovered he had moved to a Bryn Mawr home.
Last Tuesday, the detective set up a meeting with Devlin for that night. According to the affidavit, Devlin agreed, but stated: "We need to trust each other, but I read about guys trapped by cops every day."
At 8:05 that evening, the affidavit states that Devlin pulled into the meeting place, a Kohl's parking lot off Baltimore Pike in Springfield, in a black Lexus. After Devlin exited his car, police officers took him into custody. According to the affidavit, Devlin later admitted "to possessing the screen name Phillyguy5."
A preliminary hearing for Devlin, who is currently under electronic monitoring in his home, is scheduled for July 19.
Lehigh spokeswoman Tracey Moran said that the school intends to fully "work with and cooperate with authorities during the investigation."
She added that Devlin, who served as vice provost of institutional research at the university, studied admission trends and other data from colleges. Devlin has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, pending the outcome of the criminal case and an internal investigation by a private firm the university has hired, she said.
Before moving to Lehigh, Devlin worked at Penn for nine years, serving for part of that time as acting director of the Boettner Center of Financial Gerontology in what is now the School of Social Policy and Practice. According to the Penn Almanac, Devlin also taught in both the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Social Work, before becoming associate director of Penn's Office of Institutional Research and Analysis in 1999. He moved to Lehigh in March 2003, Moran said.
Penn spokesman Ron Ozio, and Devlin's defense attorney, Arthur Donato, refused to give any information about Devlin's career at Penn.
