Man locked up in past for urine fetish gets five years for child porn
A Columbus man, who spent nearly five years in prison in the 1990s for molesting boys in public restrooms in connection with a urine fetish, is heading back to prison after pleading guilty Wednesday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court to possessing child pornography.
Alan D. Patton, 70, of the Northwest Side, pleaded guilty to one felony count of pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor and was sentenced to a minimum of five years in prison by Judge Karen Phipps. Under provisions of the Reagan Tokes Act, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction could hold him for up to seven and a half years based on his behavior while incarcerated.
Patton has attracted attention throughout the past two decades for what authorities identified as a urine fetish that led to his original prison stint and more recent jail sentences.
His 1993 conviction on charges of gross sexual imposition and unlawful restraint involved allegations that he fondled four boys, two at a Big Bear store on Graceland Boulevard and two at a Magic Mountain recreation center on Scarborough Boulevard, while trying to collect their urine.
In 2009, he was sentenced to 60 days in jail after he was convicted of criminal mischief for placing plastic wrap on toilets and foam cups in urinals at Sportsohio in Dublin. He admitted to Dublin police that he placed the items in the restroom to collect the urine of young boys.
Ohio legislators were alarmed enough by his conduct to pass legislation making it a first-degree misdemeanor to collect bodily substances without consent or for nonmedical purposes.
In 2011, Patton was convicted of criminal mischief by a Delaware Municipal Court judge after an incident in which he loitered in a Burger King restroom for nearly an hour, according to an off-duty
Delaware County sheriff 's deputy.
He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years of house arrest with a GPS monitor.
Patton's latest brush with the law occurred in September 2020, when the Franklin County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received a tip that Patton was seeking child pornography through an online search engine.
Task force officers obtained a search warrant for Patton's Emberwood Road home and seized a number of electronic devices. The initial review yielded a pornographic image of a child, the Franklin County sheriff 's office said.
jfutty@dispatch.com