Dolce pleaded guilty in October to possession of explicit images of children.
"As an attorney and Southern District resident, Michael Dolce had a duty to protect children from the very crimes for which he pled guilty," U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said. "Dolce was sentenced to prison for casting aside his oath and victimizing the most vulnerable people in society."
Dolce's law license was revoked in November.
His arrest shocked his clients, the high-profile firm where he worked, and the South Florida community in which he volunteered as a Sunday school teacher at a local church for years.
The original story follows below.
On the evening of March 15, FBI agents smashed open the door to the home of Michael Dolce, a West Palm Beach lawyer who had advocated for and represented sexual abuse survivors for the past 20 years. Armed with three warrants, the agents did not have to search long to find what they were looking for.
"They discovered Dolce actively downloading child pornography using peer-2-peer software," the Department of Justice alleges.
A longtime Sunday school teacher who was once one of the state's most prominent advocates for reforming sexual abuse statutes, Dolce is behind bars awaiting his arraignment, scheduled for mid-April. He's facing a child porn possession charge that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Dolce's onetime coworkers at Cohen Milstein in Palm Beach County are beside themselves trying to square how one of the firm's ace litigators in sexual abuse cases could wind up charged with a sexual offense. Dolce, who said he was a survivor of child molestation, built a reputation for handling high-stakes lawsuits and taking an uncompromising stance not only on sexual offenders but on those who enable them.
A partner at the firm, Dolce had been working at Cohen Milstein since 2015. He was fired two days after the raid on his home.
“The firm is stunned and saddened by these appalling allegations. Michael Dolce was terminated and is no longer affiliated with the firm. We are focused on attending to the needs of our clients and staff, and continuing to cooperate fully with the investigation," Cohen Milstein said in a statement.
At a March 30 hearing, Dolce agreed to submit to pretrial detention while reserving his right to later challenge it. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment from New Times.
"Commitment of a Survivor"
Dolce's early advocacy dated back to his work lobbying for HB 525, a bill passed in 2010 to remove the statute of limitations for criminal and civil cases arising from the sexual abuse of victims under the age of 16.Between 2004 and 2010, Dolce repeatedly testified before Florida legislators in support of the measure, noting that abuse survivors are often too scared or ashamed to come forward right away. He said he was molested by a neighbor as a seven-year-old boy and that by the time he mustered the courage to speak out about it years later, he could not pursue a claim because the statute of limitations had passed.
His push for legislative reform faced opposition from the Catholic church and criminal defense lawyers' associations, among others, who argued that litigating decades-old molestation claims would be unfair.
"The law was protecting the predators. They were encouraged under the law to silence their victims, to threaten them," he said in an interview in the aftermath of the bill's passage. "It was an amazing day [when the bill passed]. I wept with joy. I was overwhelmed by relief."
Dolce received his law degree in 1994 from Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida, according to his professional profile.
He claimed in a 2009 interview that he had been teaching Sunday school for 14 years. He also alluded to a nearly five-year stint working in the state legislature, saying it helped familiarize him with the lobbying and bill-writing process.
According to his professional profile, he formed Dolce & Paruas in 2012 and worked there until 2015, when he jumped to Cohen Milstein, a large firm with a half-dozen offices spread across the country and more than 100 lawyers in its stable. By the time he joined the firm, he had already garnered a reputation for pursuing high-stakes litigation involving sex abuse claims.
During his tenure at Cohen Milstein, he reportedly secured large settlements for his clients including a $4.6 million deal in 2019 on behalf of an adult plaintiff, who alleged that his father had sexually abused him throughout his childhood.
Dolce worked out of an office in Palm Beach Gardens, in a stretch of property sandwiched between Singer Island and a beach-side golf course community near Juno Beach.
His professional profile said he "brings to his work the insight and commitment of a survivor, having himself been the victim of sexual abuse as a young boy at the hands of a sadistic predator."
“We fight a fight that can often lead to a disappointing end, but we still have to fight it because what happened to our clients cannot be allowed to continue,” Dolce said in a 2020 trade magazine interview.
The Bust
Dolce, 53, was alone in his West Palm Beach home when the FBI came knocking.Agents had surveillance teams in place to monitor him prior to the raid.
"Entry into the residence occurred as a result of a forceful breach on the door when Dolce did not respond to commands by law enforcement to come to the door. Tactical surveillance and entry teams revealed that Dolce was alone in the residence, awake on a bed at the time FBI personnel first knocked," the FBI says.
On Dolce's Samsung laptop, folders were open containing multiple illicit images, the FBI says. One subfolder was titled "Sweet Pedo Stars" and contained images of a prepubescent girl between the age of 9 and 11, according to the affidavit.
As of March 24, the FBI says, agents had located at least 1,997 child porn images on the computer.
Court records show Dolce litigated no less than 15 civil cases in Florida in the last 7 years, most of which were related to claims of sexual abuse.
One of the last pieces of litigation he filed involved a client who alleged that she was coerced into a threesome while drunk and tripping on magic mushrooms at a house party in Miami. Two weeks ago, opposing counsel noticed Dolce's disappearance from the case but did not learn the reason for it until Dolce's arrest came to light March 29.
