[Walter Breen], 61, was being held Wednesday on $200,000 bail, [Wayne Wealer] said. Part of the case against the scholar and author involved the fact that he had been on felony probation for a similar child molestation conviction a year ago in the Berkeley area, Wealer said.

Declining to provide many details about the alleged victim, the detective said the case surfaced when a 13-year-old West Los Angeles boy told his parents that he had been victimized repeatedly by Breen over the last four years. Wealer said the boy's parents apparently were friends of Breen and may have known him through his work cataloguing, researching and grading rare coins.