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	Former Boca Church Youth Director Pleads No Contest to Sex Charge By Dwayne Robinson Palm Beach Post March 16, 2008 http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/south/epaper/2008/03/16/s3c_priest_0316.html A priest who resigned as a youth director of a Boca Raton church last year after he was charged with soliciting sex pleaded no contest to the allegations Thursday. The Rev. Michael Royce Penland, 47, will not go to jail as a result of the June 28 charge of soliciting sex from an undercover male officer in a park restroom in Waynesville, N.C., his attorney said. "I think he's relieved it's over," North Carolina attorney Albert Marvin Messer said. The court did not issue a judgment of guilty or not guilty, Messer said. After Penland's plea, which doesn't admit guilt while also not contesting the charges, the former St. Gregory's Episcopal Church youth ministry director must pay court costs and stay away from recreational property in Haywood County, N.C., where he was arrested in June. Penland "denied the allegations that were brought against him, but he thought it was in the best interest not to proceed to a trial in this manner after advice from his counsel," Messer said. Penland "did not admit to what they said he did." Police charged him with "solicitation for crimes against nature," a misdemeanor. They alleged that he followed an officer into a bathroom, asked whether he could go home and have sex with him and later tried to follow him home in his car. Penland was arrested in a sting operation.
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