Calif. Doctor Pleads Guilty To Child Porn After Videotaping Young Patients

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) _ A rural doctor pleaded guilty Monday to secretly videotaping teenage girls during pelvic and breast exams. <br/><br/>Owen Murphy Panner Jr., 60, used a miniature camera hidden

Monday, July 2nd 2007, 10:20 pm

By: News On 6

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) _ A rural doctor pleaded guilty Monday to secretly videotaping teenage girls during pelvic and breast exams.

Owen Murphy Panner Jr., 60, used a miniature camera hidden in his shirt's breast pocket to videotape the pelvic examination of a 15-year-old patient, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said.

He also installed small cameras in air vents above an exam table to record a nurse practitioner performing breast and pelvic exams on a 16-year-old patient.

The recordings were made in 2001 and were discovered three years later by hunters in a field, the U.S. attorney's office said. The tapes had been buried in a container.

Panner admitted producing the tapes and acknowledged he kept them because he was a ``pack rat,'' said Scott, whose office has aggressively pursued child porn cases. Calls to a residential number in Panner's name in Alturas went unanswered Monday.

According to state Medical Board records, Panner was a graduate of the University of California at Irvine and had practiced medicine for 27 years. He surrendered his medical license in April 2006.

He pleaded guilty to one count of felony child pornography and faces up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine at sentencing in September in U.S. District Court.