Benjamin Ashford|Inmate van escape trial starts for Tennessee man facing sexual assault allegations

GREENEVILLE,Benjamin Ashford Tenn. (AP) — The first of multiple trials has begun involving a Tennessee man who is charged with raping children to create pornography, possessing methamphetamine and thousands of child sexual abuse images, and is accused in lawsuits of sexually assaulting dozens of women for years while police did little to investigate him.

But this trial, in federal court, involves a charge Sean Williams reportedly said he’s “not contesting” — that he escaped from an inmate transport van. It began Tuesday with jury selection, opening statements and some witness questioning, and is expected to continue throughout the week.

According to news outlets, Williams admitted to escaping from a van bringing him from Kentucky’s Laurel County Detention Center to federal court in Greeneville for a hearing last October. Williams, now representing himself after he and four defense attorneys parted ways, said he was “not contesting that,” but was “contesting my lawful custody during that time.”

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer halted Williams several times on Tuesday, including when he tried to raise allegations of corruption within the Johnson City Police Department, which the judge said was inadmissible.

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Authorities caught Williams in Florida more than a month after the escape.

Williams also is being prosecuted in this trial on a charge of trying to escape from the Washington County Detention Center in July 2023 by removing a section of his cell wall and concealing the work using toothpaste. He argued that removing concrete between two cells isn’t a “substantial step” toward escaping.

Williams next heads to federal trial on Aug. 27 on three counts of producing child sexual abuse material. He also faces Tennessee charges including child rape, aggravated sexual battery and especially aggravated sexual exploitation. And in a North Carolina federal court, he’s charged with possessing child sexual abuse images and illegal drugs.

The criminal cases are playing out while three federal lawsuits accuse the Johnson City Police Department of refusing to properly investigate evidence that Williams was drugging and raping women in their East Tennessee community for years. They were filed by a former federal prosecutor who was acting as a liaison with the city; nine women listed as Jane Does 1-9; and another woman individually. One of the lawsuits alleges an extortion scheme with thousands of dollars of payoffs to police to obstruct any investigative actions into sexual assault allegations against Williams.

The city has denied that any evidence supports allegations of police corruption, and said it would “welcome any investigation that could dispel such claims.” The allegations were also denied by multiple officers who were sued.

Williams has not been charged to date with sexually assaulting the women, and in a message to The Tennessean, he said he was framed by law enforcement to cover up a broader public corruption scheme, saying it’s “all going to come out soon.”

The former prosecutor’s lawsuit claims police deliberately botched her effort to arrest Williams on a federal felon-possessing-ammunition charge in April 2021, enabling him to flee. The city countered by saying she took five months to obtain an indictment when police requested one in 2020.

Williams wasn’t arrested until two years later, when a campus police officer at Western Carolina University found him asleep in his car and learned of the federal warrant.

An affidavit says a search of the car found — along with cocaine, methamphetamine and about $100,000 in cash — digital storage devices with more than 5,000 images of child sexual abuse as well as photos and videos of Williams sexually assaulting 52 women at his Johnson City apartment while they were in an “obvious state of unconsciousness.”

Many of the videos were stored in labeled folders, and at least a half-dozen names on the folders were consistent with first names on a list labeled “Raped” that Johnson City officers had found in his apartment two and a half years earlier, after a woman plunged from his fifth-floor window, the affidavit states. That woman, Mikayla Evans, survived and is the sole plaintiff in one of the lawsuits.

Amid public outcry, Johnson City in the summer of 2022 ordered an outside investigation into how officers handled sexual assault investigations. That November, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a federal sex trafficking investigation. The lawsuit by the nine women claims their attorneys also provided information for a federal public corruption investigation of the police department.

Findings from the city’s third-party audit, released in 2023, include that police conducted inconsistent, ineffective and incomplete investigations; relied on inadequate record management; had insufficient training and policies, and sometimes showed gender-based stereotypes and bias.

The city said it began improving the department’s performance while awaiting the audit’s findings, including following the district attorney’s new sexual assault investigation protocol; reviewing investigative policies and procedures; creating a “comfortable space” for victim interviews and increasing funding for officer training and a new records management system.