NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A federal lawsuit alleges that police officers took thousands of dollars from a businessman in their Tennessee town in exchange for obstructing efforts to investigate allegations that he sexually assaulted multiple women for years. The police department has denied any wrongdoing.
The racketeering claim involving several Johnson City police officers appears in court documents from a federal lawsuit accusing construction contractor Sean Williams — who is now in custody on state and federal criminal charges — of drugging and raping women in the community of East Tennessee between 2018 and 2021, while police did little to investigate him.
There was “an implicit or explicit agreement” that the officers would protect Williams, “enabling him to continue his criminal activities of abuse and human trafficking with impunity,” say attorneys for nine women, listed as Jane Does 1-9, who are suing the city.
These plaintiffs raised the extortion claims months ago, but their May 14 filing makes the claims more explicit by alleging that bank documents support the claims. The same lawyers also revealed in April that they provided hundreds of pages of information for a federal public corruption investigation of police.
Williams is awaiting trial on state charges, including child rape, aggravated sexual arousal and especially aggravated sexual exploitation, and federal charges, including three counts of production of child sexual abuse material and one count of distribution of cocaine. He is also charged with escape after authorities say he kicked out the window of a federal transport van and was captured more than a month later in Florida.
The law firm representing Williams did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment from The Associated Press.
Erick Herrin, an attorney for the city and several officers charged, said all the defendants deny the allegations but court rules limit what else he can say. In a statement, the city said it welcomes an investigation.
“No evidence has been presented to support allegations of corruption by the Johnson City Police Department, and we welcome any investigation that could refute such claims,” the city said.
The claims filed May 14 Williams’ business partner, also referred to as Female 4, opened shell companies disguised as subcontractors and transferred thousands of dollars from Williams’ company, Glass and Concrete Contracting LLC. The money was laundered so she could take “owner’s drawings” to pay $2,000 a week to some Johnson City police officers, who also seized cash from Williams’ safe, the document alleges.
Citing bank records, prosecutors say that, for example, Woman 4 withdrew nearly $30,000 in cash from the company’s account over a two-week period in June 2022. They say the woman appears to have been withdrawing no more than $10,000 per day, “likely in an effort to avoid mandatory suspicious activity.”
In a March filing, prosecutors said Williams himself described the extortion in a message from prison in September 2023. They say he used a smuggled cellphone to send the messages to a co-conspirator, who then posted them on Facebook. One of them reported weekly payments of $2,000 to agents using fraudulent 1099 tax documents and “forged owner draws.”
In a response to the court, Female 4’s attorney said her communication with Williams has been infrequent since their personal relationship ended in 2017. The filing states that the Facebook post was made by “someone using the name Sean Williams” and says she has no relevant data. has knowledge of the allegations and does not have relevant documents.
Woman 4’s attorney did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The local district attorney, who is prosecuting the Tennessee charges against Williams, declined to comment on the racketeering allegations, citing an ongoing investigation, and did not indicate whether or not they are investigating racketeering claims.
According to the lawsuits, Williams’ crimes continued even after Jane Doe 1 survived a fall from the window of his fifth-floor apartment in September 2020. Officers investigating the fall found ample evidence of sexual assault in his apartment, including a list of names labeled “Raped.” Even when that woman went public, Williams’ identity was protected as “Robert Voe.”
Kateri Lynne Dahl, a former special prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office in East Tennessee, was brought in as a liaison to the city government. She also filed a federal lawsuit against the city. She says she gathered substantial evidence that Williams had trafficked drugs and was credibly accused of sexually assaulting and raping multiple women, but police declined to investigate further and failed in their attempt to arrest him on federal charges. charge of possession of ammunition in April 2021. , which allowed him to flee.
The city refuted Dahl’s claims in a statement pointing to delays in the prosecution.
Williams was not arrested until April 2023, when a campus police officer in North Carolina found him sleeping in his car and learned of the federal warrant. An affidavit says a search of the car — along with drugs and about $100,000 in cash — found digital storage devices containing more than 5,000 images of child sexual abuse, as well as photos and videos of 52 female victims who were sexually abused by Williams in his Johnson City. apartment while in an “apparent state of unconsciousness.”
Many of the videos were stored in labeled folders, and at least a half-dozen names in the folders matched the first names on the “Raped” list found in his apartment two and a half years earlier, the affidavit said.
Meanwhile, public outrage over the police department’s response to complaints from a growing number of women prompted the city in the summer of 2022 to order an outside investigation into how officers handled sexual assault investigations. And in November 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a federal investigation into sex trafficking.
Findings from the city’s external audit, released in 2023, include that police conducted inconsistent, ineffective and incomplete investigations; relied on inadequate records management; had inadequate training and policies, and sometimes showed problems with gender-based stereotypes and biases.
The city said it began improving the department’s performance pending the audit’s findings, including following the district attorney’s new sexual assault investigation protocol; assessing research policies and procedures; creating a “comfortable space” for interviews with victims and increasing funding for officer training and a new records management system.