Sexual Assault On Sleeping Woman Nets Man Time In PA Prison

NORRISTOWN, PA — A New Jersey man will be spending time in a Pennsylvania prison after a Montgomery County jury convicted him on charges relating to a sexual assault on a sleeping woman.

Michael T. McLoughlin, 45, of Burlington, N.J., received a prison sentence of 5-and-a-half to 11 years after being found guilty on charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of an unconscious person, aggravated indecent assault and sexual assault, all felonies, according to court records in the case.

The jury had convicted McLoughlin during a days-long trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse this past spring.

Media accounts of the case state that McLoughlin was arrested after investigators received a report from a woman in Telford Borough that McLoughlin had sexually assaulted her in the fall of 2019.

At the time, the victim was awakened out of her sleep to find McLoughlin preforming a sexual act on her, according to a report in the Mercury newspaper.

McLoughlin was reportedly a friend of the victim's roommate.

Telford Borough is split between Montgomery and Bucks County, but the victim's residence is on the Montgomery County side, so prosecutors in Norristown took on the case.

The criminal docket sheet in the case shows that Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Wendy Rothstein, in addition to the prison sentence, ordered McLoughlin to comply with lifetime registration requirements under Megan's Law for convicted sex offenders.

The judge also ordered McLoughlin to undergo a sexual offender evaluation and comply with treatment recommendations, and to have no further contact with the victim.

McLoughlin was also given three years of probation after his eventual release from prison.

Court records show that McLoughlin had originally been charged with two felonies and one misdemeanor, but the misdemeanor charge, indecent assault of an unconscious person, was later replaced with a third felony charge of sexual assault.

It was not immediately clear why the charge was upgraded.

During his preliminary hearing back in the summer of 2020, a lower court judge had waived all three initial charges for Common Pleas Court, so the charge would have been changed sometime before trial, according to a look at the criminal docket sheet from Magisterial District Court.

In Pennsylvania, criminal defendants are arraigned at the Magisterial District Court level, and a lower court judge determines whether enough evidence exists in a case to warrant it being forwarded to Common Pleas Court for trial.