The fired president of Indiana’s Franklin College has pleaded no contest to child enticement and other felony charges more than two years after his arrest in a Wisconsin sex crime sting.
Thomas Minar, 58, pleaded no contest Thursday to one count of child enticement and three counts of possession of child pornography in Door County, Wisconsin, WRTV-TV reported. He is scheduled to be sentenced June 6.
Prosecutors said Minar was arrested by Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, police in January 2020, while trying to meet someone he thought was a 15-year-old boy after a sexually explicit chat through an online dating site.
According to court documents, the person Minar was trying to meet was actually an undercover police officer.
He was fired by Franklin College, a private, liberal arts college, shortly after his arrest. Minar had been the school’s president for five years and had previously announced plans to leave the school in June 2020.
Franklin College has an enrollment of about 1,000 students and is located in the city of Franklin, about 20 miles south of Indianapolis.