A veteran correction officer pled guilty to a variety of criminal sexual acts against a transsexual male prisoner yesterday, prompting officials from the correction department to terminate an 18-year career with the city’s boldest.

In a plea deal made with prosecutors to spare himself prison time, Anthony Phillips, 45, of Brooklyn, pled guilty to five counts of sexual abuse in the second degree and one count of assault in the third degree against a 40-year-old black, transsexual prisoner with female breasts.

The inmate, whose identity is being protected by prosecutors, had been arrested for grand larceny and has a history of prior arrests, a law enforcement official said.

Phillips was facing a potential four-year prison sentence for punching the transsexual inmate in the face, squeezing his neck, and then slamming his face into a sink basin. Phillips then claimed to run water into the inmate’s mouth and over his face after the inmate ripped the pants of Phillips’s uniform and his underwear after performing oral sex on the correction officer during the early morning hours in the holding area of Manhattan Criminal Court.

Phillips also admitted to fondling and sucking on the male inmate’s breasts. According to prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, Phillips is likely to receive 10 years of probation for the criminal sexual acts. Sentencing has been set for November 17.

Joey Jackson, an attorney for Phillips, did not return calls seeking comment.

“[Phillips] should have known better,” said the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigations, Rose Gill Hearn, in statement issued yesterday. “Corrections Officers are instructed that it is both inappropriate and illegal to have sexual contact with an inmate.”

Phillips was initially arrested on January 29, the same day the male inmate informed a supervising correction officer, who later contacted investigators.