Lawyer Is Sex Abuse Suspect

An attorney who worked for a firm that until recently handled Orange County’s lobbying in Sacramento has been arrested and charged with molesting a 14-year-old boy he met in an Internet chat room, according to court records.

The attorney, Jeff Nielsen, once worked as a campaign aide and field representative for former Republican state Assemblyman Scott Baugh and as an analyst in the district attorney’s office. Nielsen allegedly engaged in sexual acts with the boy at Nielsen’s south Orange County condominium and the boy’s Westminster home in March and April, a Westminster police detective said in a search warrant affidavit.

Westminster police began investigating the case in April after a fellow student told psychologists at Westminster High School that the boy confided in her about the alleged molestation, according to the affidavit. The psychologists contacted police, the affidavit said.

During a meeting with police, the boy said he and Nielsen met in an Internet chat room and eventually had three sexual encounters. Police also viewed e-mails Nielsen allegedly sent to the boy; several of them discussed meeting places and times.

According to the affidavit, Nielsen wrote in separate e-mails: “Maybe we can do something again on Sunday just like last week,” and “Can we meet up at your house? I don’t know where else to go unless you have an idea.”

The district attorney’s office charged Nielsen with six felony counts in June: three counts of committing a lewd act on a child age 14 or 15, two counts of oral copulation of a child under 16, and one count of sodomy of a child under 16.

Nielsen, 33, has pleaded not guilty and is free on $10,000 bail. He is scheduled to make his next court appearance Jan. 30 in Westminster for a pretrial hearing.

Nielsen’s attorney, Paul Meyer, declined to discuss details of the case but said, “We expect to vigorously contest these charges.”

The boy told police he communicated with Nielsen by e-mail three times a week and that he told Nielsen he was 15, according to the search warrant documents.

Nielsen’s family is well-known in Orange County political circles. His father, Ben, is the former mayor of Fountain Valley and chairman of the Orange County Planning Commission.

In 1995, Nielsen worked as a paid aide for Baugh’s Assembly campaign. The race became one of the more colorful chapters in Orange County political history because of allegations that campaign aides helped plant a Democratic opponent in the race to thin out the Democratic vote and thus boost Baugh’s chances.

When he took office in January 1996, Baugh hired Nielsen as a field representative assigned to his Huntington Beach office. Nielsen worked for Baugh until August 1996, when he quit to attend law school, Baugh said. In 1999, Nielsen worked for three months as an analyst in the Orange County district attorney’s office.

At the time of the alleged molestations, Nielsen was working for the Orange County offices of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a law firm that employed Baugh as a lobbyist for Orange County’s interests in Sacramento. A spokeswoman at the firm declined to discuss the charges but said Nielsen is no longer employed there. The law firm’s Costa Mesa office was one of the places Westminster police searched during their investigation.

Police suspect that Nielsen had e-mail contact with other minors. They seized his home computer and found that he had exchanged e-mails with a 16-year-old student at Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach. That investigation has not resulted in more charges, according to court records.