A former Skippack Township supervisor had been expected to plead guilty Wednesday to molesting a boy in his care, admitting to nearly a decade of abuse.
But at the last moment, Nicholas Fountain rejected the offer extended to him by prosecutors and chose instead to take the case to trial.
Fountain, 39, is charged with 10 counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, as well as indecent assault and related crimes. The deal he negotiated with prosecutors would have allowed him to plead guilty to four counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse in exchange for a maximum sentence of 20 to 50 years in state prison.
Instead, Fountain opted to proceed to trial on all charges, including 10 counts that each carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison upon conviction.
Fountain, who owns two daycare centers — Magnolia Enrichment Center in Skippack and Magnolia Children’s Academy in Gilbertsville — resigned from the board shortly after his arrest last year.
His attorneys, Matthew Brittenburg and Andrew Levin, declined to comment after Wednesday’s hearing.
The victim, now an adult, told police Fountain sexually abused him beginning when he was 9 years old and continuing until he was 16, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
The abuse began in 2016, he said, and started when he and Fountain were wrestling and Fountain asked him to take off his shirt and, eventually, all of his clothing.
During subsequent assaults, he said, Fountain groped him, showed him pornography, and performed a sex act on him. Fountain later attempted to initiate other sexual contact, he said, but he refused.
Prosecutors learned of the abuse last year in an unrelated investigation by law enforcement in Maryland.
Authorities there charged Fountain with sexual solicitation of a minor and child pornography after they said he solicited nude photos from an undercover officer posing as a teenage boy on Reddit, and sent nude photos of himself in return.
In their conversations, Fountain identified himself to the undercover officer as a married man, and provided a picture of himself.
Fountain also sent the officer graphic descriptions of sex acts he wanted to engage in with someone he believed to be a teenage boy, the documents said.
The officer reviewed Fountain’s history of posting on Reddit, and wrote that the “posts all encompassed sexual content and all revolved around sex acts or looking for sex acts between older men/daddies and younger boys.”
That case is ongoing and will be prosecuted after his case in Montgomery County concludes, according to a spokesperson from the Harford County State’s Attorney’s Office.
During the course of the Maryland investigation, Pennsylvania State Police troopers interviewed people close to Fountain because of the daycare centers he owns.
No allegations of wrongdoing connected to the daycare centers emerged from that inquiry, investigators said, but through those interviews, they identified the victim in the Montgomery County case.
