Professor Arrested in Internet Sex Sting

WEATHERFORD, Texas - A professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center in Houston was arrested Tuesday by investigators with a special task force who accused him of arranging on the Internet to have sex with someone he believed to be a 13-year-old girl.

The professor, 35, was released from the Parker County Jail in Weatherford, west of Fort Worth, on Wednesday morning after posting $35,000 bail, authorities said.

His is the third Internet-sex-related arrest made by the task force recently in Parker County, officials said.

According to investigators,he used the nickname "Drew35m" in an Internet chat room where he arranged to have a sexual encounter at a Weatherford motel on Tuesday.

He is an associate professor at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology at the A&M center, according to the institute's Web site. He is a biology professor conducting research into molecular and cell biology. He was previously an associate professor at the University of California at Davis, according to the Web site.

The professor, a British citizen, received his doctorate from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and University College in London in 1993, Parker County officials said on Wednesday. He has three children, they said.

In a related case, Donald Raymond Coulson, 61, of Yukon, Okla., pleaded guilty Tuesday in Parker County district court for trying to solicit sex in May on the Internet from someone he believed to be a 13-year-old from Weatherford. Coulson was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Last week, a Parker County grand jury indicted Larry Dale Faught, 52, of Plano, near Dallas, on a charge of solicitation of sex from a minor. Faught remains free on $35,000 bail.

Investigators said that all three men went into Internet chat rooms where they turned the conversations to sexual matters even after they were told that they were corresponding with a minor. In each of the investigations, the men tried to arrange a meeting with the teen-ager to engage in sex.

"All three of these men drove to Parker County fully intending to have sex with a young teen-age girl," Chief Investigator Larry Fowler said.

The new task force includes the Weatherford Police Department, Parker County district attorney's investigators and the Texas Rangers.