Tennessee suspect in dozens of rapes found guilty of producing child sexual abuse images

GREENEVILLE, Tennessee. (AP) — A Tennessee man accused of drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women while police deliberately botched their investigations against him has been found guilty of producing child sexual abuse images. Jurors found Sean Williams guilty Thursday on three federal charges related to photos of a 9-month-old, a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. Last year, a Western Carolina University officer found Williams in his car with thousands of photos of child sexual abuse, as well as photos and videos of him assaulting 52 unconscious women, a police report says. The sentence is planned to be handed down in February. The three lawsuits separately accuse Johnson City police of failing to properly investigate evidence that Williams drugged and raped women. The city and officers named in the lawsuits have denied any wrongdoing.

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GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee man accused of drug use and He sexually assaulted dozens of women He was found guilty on Thursday of producing child sexual abuse images while police deliberately failed to investigate him.

Sean Williams, 53, faces at least 15 years in prison and up to 30 years in prison on each of the three charges in the federal indictment. The sentence is scheduled to be handed down on February 24.

A Western Carolina University campus police officer found Williams asleep in his car last year, according to a police report. A search of his vehicle revealed cocaine, methamphetamine, approximately $100,000 in cash and digital storage devices containing more than 5,000 child sexual abuse images. Williams also had photos and videos showing him sexually assaulting at least 52 women in his Johnson City apartment while they were in “clear unconsciousness.”

Jurors in Greeneville federal court found Williams guilty Thursday on all three charges related to photos of a 9-month-old boy, a 4-year-old girl and a 7-year-old girl. Prosecutors said that Williams also raped the children’s mothers while they were unconscious, and that they also had photos and videos of them. Prosecutors said Williams took sexually explicit photos of one child in 2008 and two others in 2020 at his apartment.

The mothers testified at the hearing, but Williams did not. He has not yet been accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women.

Williams also faces charges in Tennessee including child rape, aggravated sexual assault of a person under the age of 13 and aggravated sexual abuse of a minor. And he is charged in North Carolina federal court with child sexual abuse images and possession of illegal drugs.

In October 2023, Williams escaped from a van taking him from the Laurel County Detention Center in Kentucky to court in Greeneville for a hearing. Authorities caught him in Florida more than a month after his escape. a jury convicted him in July He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for escape. Sentencing on this charge is scheduled for February.

Separately, three federal lawsuits It accuses the Johnson City Police Department of refusing to properly investigate evidence that Williams had been drugging and raping women in the east Tennessee community for years. These cases, which do not name Williams as a defendant, were filed by a former federal prosecutor; Nine women listed as Jane Does 1-9; and separately another woman. one of them Alleges Williams paid off police Obstructing investigations into sexual assault allegations against him.

Initial hearings in the federal cases are scheduled to begin in August 2025.

The city has denied allegations of corruption, as have the officials named in the lawsuits. The parties are expected to depose Williams in at least one of these cases.

Williams told from tennessee He was framed by law enforcement to cover up a broader public corruption scandal.

The former prosecutor’s lawsuit alleges that police deliberately thwarted an effort to arrest Williams on a federal charge of criminal possession of ammunition in April 2021, allowing him to escape. He was evading the charge when he was arrested two years later on the campus of Western Carolina University. The city disputed this, saying it took police five months to prepare an indictment in 2020.

At least a half-dozen names in the women’s video files were consistent with names on a list labeled “Raped” that Johnson City officers found in her apartment, according to a police affidavit.

Facing public criticism, Johnson City ordered an outside investigation in the summer of 2022 into how officers handle sexual assault investigations. That November, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI opened a federal sex trafficking investigation.

The results of the city’s external investigation, released in 2023, found that police conducted inconsistent, ineffective and incomplete investigations; relied on inadequate records management; had inadequate training and policies; and sometimes showed gender-based stereotypes and prejudices.

The city said the district attorney began improving the department’s performance even before the findings were released, including following new sexual assault investigation protocol and creating a “comfortable space” for victim interviews.

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