A 35-year-old man who told authorities he had a “foot fetish” and broke into a home to get sexual pleasure from touching the feet of sleeping children was recently convicted of burglary and lewd conduct charges, according to the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office.
George Fey, of Hobe Sound in Martin County, will be sentenced on Tuesday. He is facing life in prison on two counts of burglary with assault or battery, 15 years for each of two counts of lewd or lascivious conduct and 15 years for burglary of a dwelling.
He befriended his now 9- and 17-year-old victims’ family at the First Baptist Church of Tequesta about five years prior to the April 2008 incident that led to his arrest.
That’s when Fey was found entering his victims’ home where he admitted he would masturbate while touching their feet as they slept, according to a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office arrest report. At the time, there were seven children ranging in ages from 3 to 19 living at the home. Fey told police he crept into the home at least four times.
Fey would watch movies, play cards and hang out with the family, but was finally told not to show up unannounced or without adults around once he started behaving oddly. He would bring over R-rated movies, excuse himself while watching a movie, hide under a bed and laugh when found. He told the parents he hid under the beds to playfully scare the children, according to the report.
The boys began telling their parents about waking up in the middle of the night and finding Fey by their bedside in 2007. Fey would come in through the back yard and slip in through the home’s glass sliding door. When the weather was cool and the boys slept on the porch outside, they would awake to find Fey sitting beside them.
By December 2007, the boys’ mother confronted Fey and, according to the arrest report, said “it wasn’t a game anymore, this is something serious.”
On the day of Fey’s arrest, one of the parents stayed up and called police when they caught Fey sneaking into the home. Fey told investigators he knew he would eventually get caught and that he had sought psychiatric help before. He also said a psychiatrist prescribed Prozac and told him the urges would never go away and he would have to learn to control them, the report states.
Fey had been a student at Palm Beach Atlantic University where he was banned from trespassing after he was discovered crouched under a library desk looking at a man’s feet in 2002. There were about 20 such incidents at the school prior to this case that went unreported to police, according to the report.
Fey, who had been discharged from the Navy three months after enlisting, also had been thrown out of movie theaters for masturbating in public, the report states.
Erika Pesantes can be reached at or 561-243-6602.
