This is the second case this week involving one of Joe Francis' employees. Matthew O'Sullivan of Los Angeles was charged earlier with a first-degree criminal sexual act. Now we have a guy pleading guilty to one count of child abuse.
PANAMA CITY — The man who filmed the notorious "shower scene" resolved his 2003 criminal case Thursday with a plea.
Mark Schmitz, 31, pleaded guilty to one count of child abuse and was placed on five years of probation. His probation can be transferred to his home state of Indiana.
Schmitz pleaded to the same charge that his former boss, "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis, pleaded to in March. Francis, however, was sentenced to time served.
Both men faced the most serious charges stemming from the 2003 arrest of Francis and nearly a dozen of his employees and contract cameramen after two 17-year-old girls reported they'd been filmed in a sexual situation in a Panama City Beach motel room shower during Spring Break.
The video of that encounter, which Schmitz filmed, was known in court records and proceedings as the "shower scene."
Francis and Schmitz were charged with racketeering, promoting the sexual performance of a child and using children in a sexual performance, among other things.
