SPOKANE – A former emergency room doctor at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Spokane has been sentenced in federal court to 12 terms of life in prison for being a child molester.
Craig Morgenstern was sentenced Monday after two hours of testimony in which victimized boys and their parents urged the judge to show no leniency.
The 47-year-old Morgenstern spent months and sometimes years grooming at least six boys, sedated them with prescription drugs and then filmed himself performing sex acts on them, The Spokesman-Review said.
Morgenstern’s crimes spanned at least four states. They came to light only after a 13-year-old boy escaped his half-million-dollar home and ran screaming to a neighbor’s house in 2014.
U.S. District Court Judge William F. Nielsen handed down a sentence of 12 life terms.