Pa. neurologist sentenced in $750 child sex sting

PITTSBURGH – A Pennsylvania neurologist who admitted offering to pay $750 for sex with a 10-year-old girl has been sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison.

Forty-one-year-old Roger Wesley Farris II offered the money to an undercover agent posing as the girl's uncle. He pleaded guilty in July and was sentenced Friday by a federal judge in Pittsburgh to three years and eight months.

Farris specialized in dementia research at the University of Pittsburgh. His attorney argued a head injury he suffered in a 2005 mugging prompted his behavior, which the judge called "nothing less than despicable."

Farris received a sentence about half as long as recommended by sentencing guidelines, in part because he's expected to lose his medical license. He lived in suburban Fox Chapel at the time of his March 2008 arrest but now lives in Waynesboro, Va.