Federal Judge Green-Lights Victims’ Class Action Lawsuit Against Johnson City, Police

Friday’s ruling opens the door for potentially hundreds of victims of sexual assault and trafficking over a five-year period.

Photo: Eight Johnson City women who are participating in a lawsuit against Johnson City over its handling of rape reports spoke at a Knoxville press conference on Tuesday to push back on public statements suggesting victims shared fault. Photo Credit: John Partipilo

By Anita Wadhwani [Tennessee Lookout -CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] –

A federal judge has greenlit a class action lawsuit against Johnson City and its police force that makes explosive allegations that some cops took bribes and turned the other way while a serial rapist assaulted scores of women and at least two children.

The ruling on Friday dramatically raises the stakes in a police corruption scandal that has roiled the northeast Tennessee community — and the city’s potential liability should it lose or settle the case.

Instead of ten plaintiffs, identified as “Jane Does” in a lawsuit first filed in June, the ruling now opens the door to potentially hundreds of Johnson City victims who were sexually assaulted over a more than five-year period, from January 1, 2018 to April 25, 2023 — regardless of who the perpetrator was or whether the assaults were reported to police.

U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough said he didn’t find Johnson City’s efforts to thwart the class action lawsuit compelling. His 17-page decision dismissed nearly every argument the city sought to raise in limiting the scope of the lawsuit, including a suggestion that victims’ attorneys sought class action status as a ploy to delay the legal process.

“The subject of this case — an alleged conspiracy between JCPD and a serial rapist — is complex and sensitive, and it is reasonable to expect that not all victims who wish to participate in the suit will come forward at an early stage in the litigation,” McDonough’s decision said.

The class action claims also provide a built-in shield for victims, who will not have to step forward or identify themselves as the case winds through the court system.

That protection could prove especially important to sexual assault victims in Johnson City.

Among the numerous misconduct allegations against Johnson City police is that they arrested, physically assaulted and then conspired to evict a victim of sexual assault from public housing after she cooperated with a federal prosecutor investigating multiple sexual assault allegations against Johnson City businessman Sean Williams that had gone long ignored by local police.

Kateri Dahl, the federal prosecutor who was working as a liaison with Johnson City Police Department, has since filed a whistleblower suit making many of the same allegations as the victims’ lawsuit.

Johnson City police never arrested Williams for sexual assault, despite efforts by multiple women to report their assaults to police. At one point, during a search of Williams’ downtown condo on unrelated illegal ammunition charges, police discovered a handwritten note on his nightstand scrawled with the first names of 23 women, under the word “raped.”

Then-police chief Karl Turner dismissed the list, saying “I don’t know if that’s girls he’s raped or girls he’s had consensual sex with and calls it whatever he calls it. All I know is there’s a piece of paper with some first names on it,” according to legal filings.

Williams was arrested in North Carolina last April after local officers on a routine patrol at a local university found him sleeping in his car. The campus officers found three-fourths of a pound of cocaine and nearly a pound of methamphetamine in the car.

A search of his electronic equipment yielded images of 52 women who appeared to be drugged as Williams sexually assaulted them in his Johnson City apartment. Women who previously reported their assaults to Johnson City police were among the recovered images.

Williams’ electronic devices also contained images of two children being sexually assaulted, including a child under 2 years old, court records said. Williams is now in jail, facing charges of child rape and child pornography.

“We respect the decision of the court and are prepared to move forward with the case,” read a statement released Saturday by the office of Johnson City Manager Cathy Ball.

Victims’ attorneys declined to comment late Friday.

The women are represented by California-based attorneys Vanessa Baeher-Jones of Advocates for Survivors of Abuse and Elizabeth Kramer of Erickson, Kramer & Osborne, and Brentwood-based attorney Heather Moore Collins with HMC Civil Rights Law.

Court rules bar attorneys from making public comments during active litigation, but the federal judge late last year granted a one-time exception for plaintiffs in the case after Ball held a press conference suggesting Williams’ victims bore some fault for their assaults because they “consumed and partook of illegal drugs.”

“I am one of the 52 women whom Sean Williams sexually assaulted while taking sexually explicit photos of me,” one woman said during the victims’ press conference held in Knoxville earlier this month to respond to Ball’s comments.

“My name also appears on the ‘raped’ list, which the Johnson City Police Department recovered Sean Williams apartment…The people in my community who are supposed to protect me and the other women you see here today failed us.”