Tennessee suspect in dozens of rapes has been convicted of creating images of child sex abuse

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A tennessee man faces lawsuits of drugging and dozens of women were sexually abused while police deliberately bungled the investigation into him, he was convicted on Thursday of producing child sexual abuse images.

Sean Williams, 53, faces a minimum mandatory prison sentence of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison for each of the three counts in the federal indictment. The verdict is set for February 24.

According to a police report, a police officer on the campus of Western Carolina University found Williams asleep in his car last year. 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 was also in possession of photographs and videos showing him sexually assaulting at least 52 women in his Johnson City apartment while they were in an “apparent state of unconsciousness.”

Jurors in Greeneville federal court on Thursday found Williams guilty of all three charges related to the images of a nine-month-old boy, a four-year-old girl and a seven-year-old girl. Prosecutors said Williams also raped the children’s mothers while they were unconscious and that there were images and videos of them as well.

The mothers testified at the trial, but Williams did not. He has not yet been charged with sexually assaulting any of the dozens of women.

Williams also faces charges in Tennessee including child rape, aggravated sexual battery of someone under the age of 13 and, most importantly, aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor. And he is accused in a federal court in North Carolina of possessing child sexual abuse images and illegal drugs.

In October 2023, Williams escaped from a van taking him from the Laurel County Detention Center in Kentucky to the courthouse in Greeneville for a hearing. Authorities arrested him more than a month after the Florida escape. A jury convicted him in July of the escape, for which he faces a maximum prison sentence of five years. The verdict on this charge is scheduled for February.

Individual, three federal lawsuits accuse Johnson City police of refusing to properly investigate evidence that Williams had drugged and raped women in their East Tennessee community for years. These lawsuits, which do not name Williams as a defendant, were filed by a former federal prosecutor; nine women listed as Jane Does 1-9; and another woman individually. One of them claims Williams paid off the police to hinder investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against him.

The first of the trials in the federal lawsuits is expected to begin in August 2025.

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

Williams said The Tennessean he was framed by police to cover up a wider public corruption scandal.

The former prosecutor alleges that police deliberately botched their attempt to arrest Williams on a federal charge of possession of ammunition in April 2021, allowing him to flee. He was on the run from that charge when he was arrested two years later on the campus of Western Carolina University. The city countered that it took her five months to obtain an indictment, when police requested one in 2020.

At least a half-dozen names in the folders containing videos of women matched the first names on a list labeled “Rape” that Johnson City officers found in his apartment, a police statement said.

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

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 exhibited gender-based stereotypes and prejudices.

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