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Winter Park Doctor Pleads Guilty To Sexual Battery

Posted: 12:04 pm EDT May 18, 2004Updated: 6:00 pm EDT May 18, 2004

A Winter Park plastic surgeon pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to sexual battery. The victim was 19 years old and passed-out drunk.

Dr. Thomas Hunter said Tuesday, he still believes the teenager consented. He pled guilty in court Tuesday, but told the judge he's doing it because it's in his best interest. In other words, he's saying he's guilty and not guilty at the same time.

Dr. Hunter says he thought the 19-year-old was consenting, even though the teenager did not say a word. The incident happened hours after a Halloween party at an Orlando house.

The teenager says he passed out after having eight drinks in an hour and a half and, when he woke, he found Dr. Hunter, whom he had never seen before, sexually assaulting him.

Investigators say, during a tape-recorded phone conversation, Hunter admitted the teen's eyes never opened.

During a phone call between the victim and Dr. Hunter, which was recorded by police, they say Dr. Hunter was his own worst witness.

"I was conscious enough to know right from wrong," Hunter says on the recorded call.

"Did you ever tell you that I wanted to have sex with you?" the victim asks.

"No, but your physical actions indicated you did and you never said no," Hunter responds. "You didn't open your eyes, it looked like you weren't asleep and I said hello and you didn't say anything."

But police and prosecutors say it wasn't okay that Dr. Hunter assumed the teenager's silence under those circumstances meant that he consented and, judging by the phone call, it seems Dr. Hunter was wrong about something else, too.

"I am not gonna be made out to be a criminal," he says on the recording. "If that's what it's going to take to make you feel better, that's not gonna happen."

But Tuesday, the Winter Park plastic surgeon gave us a different story.

"Those are not the facts," he told us.

"Are you saying he did look at you now?" Channel 9 asked.

"Yes, there was," he said.

Even Dr. Hunter admits he never talked to the teenager before the incident.

Hunter has to give up his license to practice medicine, because he pled guilt. And, depending on what the judge decides in two weeks when he's sentenced, he may have to give up his license for good.

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