Crime & Safety
10-Year Plea Deal Offered to Ex-Bernardsville Administrator
Patrick Lott, former Bernardsville Middle School assistant principal, offered plea deal on charges regarding hidden cameras in Immaculata High School showers.
The Somerset County Prosecutor's office has offered a plea deal of 10 years of jail time to Patrick Lott, the former assistant principal at to settle up charges that he had videotaped nude boys in the showers at Immaculata High School prior to his arrest in December 2011.
The offer was made publicly on Friday morning in the courtroom of state Superior Court Judge Julie Marino in Somerville. Laurie Head-Melillo, a prosecutor for Somerset County, named the proposed jail term during a brief appearance before the judge.
Lott's attorney, James Wronko, said he would need time to discuss the deal with his client. Marino granted him permission to return to court with an answer in three weeks, on Feb. 15.
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At that time, Wronko said he will either resolve the case, or prepare to proceed with a trial.
Wronko said on Friday morning that the file on evidence to be gathered in the case is complete, and he had received discovery materials that would be presented in the prosecution's case.
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Lott, who also was employed at the time as assistant principal at the middle school for the Somerset Hills School district and also had been an administrator at was a volunteer coach at Immaculata, a private Catholic school in Somerville, at the time of the alleged offenses.
Lott, a 55-year-old Somerville resident, is accused of videotaping nude boys through hidden cameras in the shower at Immaculata High School.
While working in the Somerset Hills school district, Lott received high ratings from students who posted an opinion on Rate My Teachers while he was a teacher and then assistant principal at the high school.
Somerset Hills Schools Superintendent Peter Miller said that subsequent investigation and also a search of school facilities in Bernardsville showed there was no indication that any related offenses had ever taken place in that school district.
"We have not been informed of any connection to students in our district," Miller said last year.
A thin and pale Lott, who remains in the Somerset County Jail, attended Friday morning's court proceedings, but made no comment.
The Somerset County Prosecutor's Office announced late last June that Lott had been indicted on 29 counts of third-degree invasion of privacy, 30 counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, 17 counts of third-degree endangering the welfare of a child and 15 counts of fourth-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
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