Prosecutor faces 3 yrs prison accused of soliciting sex from 20+ women in exchange for leniency

[davidn3600]

Harry Morel’s career as the district attorney in St. Charles Parish spanned 33 years. And for a good portion of that time in office, he used his power and position to obtain sexual favors from troubled women in exchange for leniency, according to federal authorities.

That sordid background won’t play much of a role at Morel’s sentencing Wednesday. The 73-year-old, who retired from his elected position in 2012, pleaded guilty in April to a single count of obstruction of justice for urging one would-be victim to destroy a memory card with photos of one of their encounters.

It was a case that almost didn’t happen.

While local and federal authorities had investigated the sex-for-leniency complaints for years, it wasn’t until Danelle Keim McGovern made a 911 call to the sheriff’s office in 2010 that a federal case appeared feasible.

“I need to make a sexual harassment charge on Harry Morel,” McGovern said in a clear but distraught voice on the 911 call. When a deputy arrived, McGovern offered a lengthy description of what happened.

“Right when I get by my door he grabs me by my waist, turns me around and kisses me,” she told a deputy. “I mean he puts his disgusting, nasty-ass tongue in my mouth and just kissed me. So I just pulled away.”

That complaint launched a sequence of events in which McGovern would eventually go undercover for the FBI, wearing a recording device during meetings with Morel.

McGovern did not live to see what the feds would do with the information she gathered. In 2013, McGovern, mother of a then-5-year-old boy, died of a drug overdose.

The fact that her death took place directly after the allegations against Morel became public is considered a tragic coincidence. But Danelle's mother, Tammy Glover, said the toll the case took on her psychologically fragile daughter was tremendous.

“Harry Morel had everything to do with her death. Even physically if he didn't, mentally, emotionally, he tore my daughter up,” Glover said in an exclusive interview with WWL-TV.

Glover revealed that before her daughter made the 911 call that started the federal case, she made another call. To her.

“I answered my phone and she was hysterical. Like I couldn't even understand her,” Glover recalled. “She said, ‘Mom, he almost raped me. This is what he did. He touched me all over.’ ”

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U.S. Attorney Kenneth Police said that while Morel was elected to be the chief prosecutor in St. Charles Parish, “in the darkness of his heart, he was something else entirely: a man who perverted his position of power to take sexual advantage of desperate women who needed help. And he did this over and over again.”

http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/st-charles/former-das-sex-for-leniency-scheme-haunts-mother-of-dead-witness/299882764

Apparently most of the sexual acts occurred beyond the statue of limitations. And the top witness in the case died in 2013. So prosecutors had very little evidence to charge him with anything.