Fear of the
"pretty stocky black guy" who turned out to be an
undercover cop made Florida state representative Bob Allen
perform the actions that led to a charge of
solicitation to commit prostitution, Allen told police
in documents aired by the Orlando Sentinel.
Allen was
arrested July 11 in a Titusville, Fla., public park restroom
after he offered the officer $20 to let him perform oral
sex, police said.
The charge, a
second-degree misdemeanor, is punishable by a year in
county jail and a $500 fine. Allen says he is innocent and
that he will not resign from the legislature. He did
resign late last month from the board of the Girls and
Boys Town of Central Florida, cable TV station Central
Florida News 13 reported.
He is scheduled
to be arraigned August 23.
In a taped
statement and other documents released last week, Allen, 48,
told police that he was intimidated into offering sex.
"I certainly
wasn't there to have sex with anybody and certainly
wasn't there to exchange money for it," the Sentinel
quoted him as saying.
Rather, he said,
"this was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was
nothing but other black guys around in the park," Allen
said. He said he feared he "was about to be a
statistic."
Titusville police
told the Sentinel that they were investigating
a nearby condo burglary when they saw a disheveled,
unshaved man enter and leave the park restroom three times.
They decided to send in Officer Danny Kavanaugh.
In a statement
Kavanaugh said he was drying his hands in a stall when
Allen peered--twice--over the stall door, then
joined Kavanaugh inside.
"This is kind of
a public place, isn't it?" Kavanaugh quoted Allen as
saying, according to the Sentinel. Allen then
suggested "going across the bridge; it's quieter over
there."
When Allen was
loaded into the patrol car, the statement said, he asked
if "it would help" that he was a state legislator.
"No," the officer
said.
Soon after taking
office in 2001, Allen was one of 21 Florida legislators
to sign Gov. Jeb Bush's friend-of-the-court brief supporting
the state's ban on gays adopting children.
In March he
cosponsored an unsuccessful bill that would have enhanced
penalties for "offenses involving unnatural and lascivious
acts," such as indecent exposure. (Barbara Wilcox,
The Advocate)