A Connecticut man, accused of luring a 6-year-old girl into a stairwell at the Newport Marriott two years ago and molesting her, pleaded no contest to the charges Thursday and was sentenced to serve five years in prison.

Jonathan S. Peskin, 45, of Vernon, Conn., pleaded no contest to one count of second-degree child molestation before Superior Court Judge Edwin J. Gale. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors, who were preparing to take Peskin to trial, dismissed one count of kidnapping.

Peskin, who admitted his crime in court Thursday, had been the subject of a magazine piece in The Hartford Courant last June in which freelance writer Donald S. Connery argued that Peskin had been forced by police investigators to confess to the crime after 10 hours of questioning.

Said Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch: “The evidence clearly pointed to the defendant as the young victim’s assailant.”

Investigators say that Peskin lured the girl from a hallway on Oct. 3, 2004, and into a back stairwell where he exposed himself and then molested her. The young victim and her family were guests at the hotel at the time. The child told her parents about the incident after they returned home to New York.

The girl’s father contacted the Newport police and the child gave investigators a description of her assailant.

Peskin was not linked to the case until January 2005, when local police in Windsor, Conn., were called to the Hartford/Windsor Marriott Airport hotel for a report of a suspicious man in the lobby. Local police there had received complaints in recent months of a man approaching young girls in hotels and exposing himself.

Windsor police took Peskin into custody that day. According to police reports, Peskin admitted then to molesting a girl at a Newport hotel the previous fall.

Judge Gale ordered Peskin to undergo sexual offender counseling and register as a sex offender upon his release from prison.