Federal grand jury indicts Morgenstern

A federal grand jury Tuesday indicted Dr. Craig A. Morgenstern on accusations that during the past six years he took four children from Spokane to Hayden, Idaho where he sexually abused them, made films and mailed the pornography. The physician remains jailed on the nine new federal charges and separate state charges. Morgenstern, 45, has been placed on administrative leave from the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Spokane said Morgenstern took a child on September 2008 to Hayden. It’s a pattern he would repeat with three other children in separate trips in April 2010, again in May 2010, and then in October 2011. Morgenstern was first arrested Oct. 20, 2014 after a 13-year-old boy awoke to being sexually abused at the doctor’s Nine Mile Falls home and fled to find help. Two days later Morgenstern was arrested. He is accused of drugging the boy with the sedative benzodiazepine and then abusing him. The nine-count federal indictment carries a possible penalty of decades to life in prison.