Officials deny extortion of contractor accused of sexually harassing women for years

A lawsuit filed in federal court alleges that police officers in their Tennessee town took thousands of dollars from a businessman to obstruct the investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed several women over a period of years. Police deny any wrongdoing.

The racketeering allegation, which involves several Johnson City police officers, appears in the court records of a federal lawsuit accusing construction contractor Sean Williams – who is currently in custody on state and federal charges – of drugging and raping women in the East Tennessee community from 2018 to 2021 while police barely investigated him.

There was “either an implied or express agreement” that officers would provide protection to Williams, “which allowed him to continue his criminal activities of abuse and human trafficking with impunity,” say lawyers for nine women, listed as Jane Does 1-9, who are suing the city.

These plaintiffs made the racketeering allegations months ago, but their May 14 complaint makes the allegations even more explicit by claiming that bank documents support the claims. The same lawyers also announced in April that they have provided hundreds of pages of information to a federal investigation into the police department for public corruption.

Williams is awaiting trial on state charges, including child rape, aggravated sexual assault and especially aggravated sexual exploitation, as well as federal charges, including three counts of producing child sexual abuse material and one count of cocaine trafficking. He is also accused of fleeing after authorities said he kicked in the window of a government 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 of the accused officers, said all of the defendants deny the allegations but court rules limit what he can say further. In a statement, the city said it would welcome an investigation.

“No evidence has been presented to support allegations of corruption against the Johnson City Police Department, and we welcome any investigation that could dispel such allegations,” the city said.

Allegations set out

The May 14 filing alleges that Williams’ business partner, dubbed “Female 4,” opened shell companies posing as subcontractors and transferred thousands of dollars from Williams’ company, Glass and Concrete Contracting LLC. The money was laundered so she could make “owner withdrawals” to pay $2,000 a week to some Johnson City police officers who also seized cash from Williams’ safe, the document says.

The plaintiffs point to bank records and say that, for example, Ms. 4 withdrew nearly $30,000 in cash from the company’s account during a two-week period in June 2022. They say the woman apparently did not withdraw more than $10,000 per day, “likely in an effort to evade mandatory (reporting) of suspicious activity.”

In a March filing, the plaintiffs 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 mentioned weekly payments of $2,000 to officials using fraudulent 1099 tax documents and “fake property statements.”

In a court document in response, Ms. 4’s attorney said her communication with Williams had been infrequent since their personal relationship ended in 2017. The document said the Facebook post was written by “someone under the name Sean Williams” and that she had no relevant knowledge of the allegations and did not have any relevant documents.

Ms. 4’s lawyer did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

The local district attorney prosecuting Williams in Tennessee declined to comment on the racketeering allegations, citing ongoing investigations. He also did not say whether racketeering allegations were being investigated.

An alleged victim fell from a fifth-floor window

The charges say 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 numerous pieces of evidence of sexual assault in his apartment, including a list of names marked “Raped.” Even when that woman went public, Williams’ identity was protected as “Robert Voe.”

Kateri Lynne Dahl, a former special prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in East Tennessee, was brought in as a liaison with city authorities. She also filed a federal lawsuit against the city. She says she collected substantial evidence that Williams dealt drugs and was credibly accused of sexually assaulting and raping multiple women, but police refused to investigate further and botched their attempt to arrest him in April 2021 for possession of ammunition, allowing him to flee.

The city denied Dahl’s allegations in a statement, citing delays in 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 arrest warrant. An affidavit states that the search of the car turned up – in addition to drugs and about $100,000 in cash – 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 they were in an “apparent state of unconsciousness.”

Many of the videos were kept in labeled folders, and at least half a dozen names in those folders matched the first names on the “raped” list found in his apartment two and a half years earlier, the affidavit said.

Meanwhile, public outcry over the police response to complaints from a growing number of women prompted the city to order an outside investigation into officers’ handling of sexual assault investigations in the summer of 2022. And in November 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI launched a federal sex trafficking investigation.

The findings of the third-party audit conducted by the city and released in 2023 include that police conducted inconsistent, ineffective and incomplete investigations, relied on inadequate record keeping, had inadequate training and policies, and sometimes had problems with gender stereotypes and bias.

The city said it had begun improving the department’s performance in anticipation of the audit’s results, including complying with the district attorney’s new sex crimes investigation protocol, reviewing investigative policies and procedures, creating a “comfortable space” for interviewing victims, and increasing funding for officer training and a new data management system.