Susan Jacobson | Sentinel Staff Writer
Thomas Maroney
An Ocoee police sergeant was arrested Thursday after an investigation concluded that he stripped, fondled and spanked a woman against her will, leaving welts on her rear and legs.
It was the second time similar allegations have been made against Sgt. Thomas T. Maroney, 35, investigative documents show -- although the woman who made the previous claim escaped without being touched.
In this week's case, the woman, 30, told Orange County sheriff's investigators that another Ocoee police officer invited her and a friend to a party Monday, and Maroney "bet her" on card tricks he performed and said she owed him on the bet, a sheriff's report says.
According to the report:
Maroney appeared drunk, the woman told investigators, and asked her to walk with him around a retention pond at the apartment complex. When they were alone, he asked her for oral sex, pulled down her pants, touched her genitals, pinned her across his legs as he sat on the ground and spanked her about a dozen times on her bare butt.
The woman said she cried and struggled, but Maroney held her down and switched from his hand to a leather belt, hitting her another half-dozen times.
"Nothing was consensual," said Sam Filler, the woman's attorney. "He brutalized her. He violated the public trust. And she doesn't want this to happen to anyone else."
Maroney's attorney, Mark Lippman, acknowledged that Maroney was at the party but would not comment further. When Maroney's home was searched Tuesday, he handed over a black belt and admitted that he spanked the woman, claiming she agreed, the sheriff's report states.
Maroney was released on $8,500 bail from the Orange County Jail about 10:15 p.m. Thursday. The charges are attempted sexual battery, false imprisonment and battery.
In 2004, a woman who had been an Ocoee police intern complained that Maroney made a bet on a card trick and tried to collect by spanking her, a police internal-affairs report shows. Maroney received a written warning.
Jim Leusner and Gabrielle Finley of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
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