Deval Patrick Aide Arrested for Assault

A senior aide to Mass. Gov. Deval L. Patrick ’78 has been arrested and charged with one count of sexual battery for allegedly performing oral sex on a minor at a hotel in Florida, according to court documents.

Carl S. McGee, who is assistant secretary for policy and planning in the Democratic administration, was a 1998 graduate of Harvard Law School and a former Rhodes Scholar.

According to a probable cause document from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, McGee was arrested at the Gasparilla Inn & Club in Boca Grande, Fla. in late December after police received a complaint from a man claiming that McGee had sexually abused his teenage son in the steam room of the $600-a-night Gulf Coast resort.

McGee entered the steam room, masturbated in front of the victim, and performed oral sex on the victim while sodomizing him, according to court documents.

“Mr. McGee was placed on administrative leave effective Jan. 7, pending the outcome of the matter,” said Kofi Jones, the spokesman for McGee’s supervisor, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Daniel O’Connell.

Calls placed to McGee’s home and lawyer were not returned.

The Democratic leadership in the legislature also did not respond to requests for comment.

McGee, who had worked on several pieces of legislation with Patrick, according to The Boston Globe, is scheduled to be arraigned next week on charges of sexual battery.

A 1992 magna cum laude graduate of the University of Alabama, McGee was once named by USA Today as one of the top twenty undergraduates in the nation.

McGee was married in November 2005 to John H. Finley, IV ’92 in a ceremony officiated by Cambridge’s former Democratic state senator, Jarrett T. Barrios ’90.

Finley, an ordained Episcopal priest, has strong ties to Harvard. A former resident of Adams House, he was secretary of the Signet Society. He was also active in the Phillips Brooks House Association, working at the Lutheran Church Homeless Shelter.

—Staff writer Prateek Kumar can be reached at kumar@fas.harvard.edu.