NEW YORK — A lawyer who was indicted on charges of having sex with two underage sisters with their mother’s approval pleaded not guilty Tuesday to another indictment that charges him with having sex with a third minor girl.
James Colliton, 42, pleaded “absolutely not guilty” to a new 43-count indictment charging him with third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy and patronizing a prostitute. He faces up to four years in prison if convicted on any of the rape or sodomy counts.
The indictment says that from Christmas Day 2000 through January 2002 Colliton, a lawyer formerly at the prestigious Manhattan firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, had sex from time to time with a girl younger than 17.
Assistant District Attorney Rachel Hochhauser said the girl in the new case was 15 when she began having sex with Colliton and is not related to the other two.
Colliton’s lawyer, Howard Greenberg, said the timing of the new indictment was suspicious. He said he believes prosecutors had to find another girl because the case involving the first two was “falling apart.”
Greenberg also noted the patronizing a prostitute charge in the indictment and asked outside court, “Who’s the hooker?” He said he wondered whether the prosecution was referring to the girl in the new indictment as the prostitute.
Colliton, who has a wife and five children in Poughkeepsie, was arrested in the East Village on March 3. He had made his way back to New York after being arrested days earlier by Canadian authorities and then released for reasons that are unclear.
In a statement Feb. 25 to Canadian police, released by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Colliton had said, “I’m going to get 12 years for what I did. I’d rather do the time in Canada. There are too many gangs in U.S. prisons.”
Items that New York detectives said they confiscated from Colliton included nearly $10,000 in cash, $2,100 in American Express gift cards, cell phones, toiletries, a “purple multispeed stimulator” and a plastic bottle of Spanish fly, said to be a herbal aphrodisiac.
Last week, the 38-year-old mother of the two girls pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child. She admitted that she allowed them to have sex with Colliton and knew he was giving them money and gifts. She also admitted that she received money from her daughters and that she had asked Colliton for money directly.
The woman, whose name was withheld to protect her daughters’ identities, admitted that one girl was 13 when she began virtually living at Colliton’s East 57th Street apartment in 2004.