Man Who Gave Teen-agers Drugs for Sex Gets 7 Years

A 54-year-old El Toro engineer who offered teen-age girls drugs in exchange for sexual favors was given a seven-year prison sentence Friday by an Orange County Superior Court judge who chastised him for capitalizing on their vulnerability.

Felix F. Maron, who owned a successful engineering firm and a restaurant when he was arrested two years ago, had pleaded guilty to 154 counts of having sex with minors and providing drugs to minors. Seven girls were involved, including two sisters, between the ages of 13 and 16.

“High school kids are kids,” Judge Leonard H. McBride told Maron. “They are not mistresses; they are kids. Those of us who have raised children are fearful every time they are out of our sight. . . . We have a right to expect other adults not to hurt our children.”

Maron faced a maximum penalty of 10 years on the counts, but McBride had indicated at a pretrial hearing that he would give him no more than seven years if Maron would plead guilty to spare the victims the trauma of a trial. He pleaded guilty last November.

Maron, a native of Peru, told the judge at his sentencing hearing Friday that he had been “foolish and irresponsible.”

“I wish it were a nightmare that would go away,” he said.

Dr. David M. Pierce, a Santa Ana psychologist hired by the defense to examine Maron, described him as a man who was “lonely and fiftyish, who valued a family very much.”

Maron was divorced during the period he was meeting with the girls at his Sleepy Hollow Terrace home. Pierce said Maron had been depressed about the divorce.

Maron admitted that he first met two of the girls in October, 1984, near his home and offered them drugs. When they came back for more drugs, he demanded sex in exchange. He widened his network of girls to seven by the time he was arrested on Aug. 16, 1985, after one of the girls reported the sex to her parents, who called police.

A father of one of the girls and the mother of another testified Friday that their family lives have been destroyed by Maron.

“It’s changed everything about her,” one mother said of her daughter. “She lost her self-esteem.” The woman said she finally had to send her daughter to Texas to live with her father.

“The hardest thing I ever had to do was pack her up and send her back there,” the woman said, fighting tears.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marvin A. Stern said Maron will probably be eligible for parole in about two years.