Johnson City has agreed to pay $28 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by women who alleged police failed to investigate their sexual assaults and conspired to shield a serial rapist from justice.
The settlement, which city officials called the most expensive in Johnson City’s history, must be approved by a federal judge before the process of distributing funds to a potential pool of more than 400 victims, including children, can begin.
The settlement brings to a close a lawsuit that surfaced a series of explosive allegations against the Johnson City Police Department since it was first filed in June 2023.
Among the suit’s allegations is that police violated federal sex trafficking laws and engaged in a conspiracy involving kickbacks to protect Sean Williams, a former Johnson City businessman now implicated in scores of sex crimes against women and children.
Williams was arrested in 2023 while sleeping in his car in North Carolina. His arrest led to the recovery of images that showed Williams sexually abusing 67 women and children inside his Johnson City condo, court records said. Included among the images are victims who reported their assaults to Johnson City police to no avail, the lawsuit alleged.
Williams is now behind bars awaiting a Feb. 24 sentencing for three counts of producing child pornography and one count of escaping federal custody. Federal prosecutors earlier this month submitted their sentencing recommendation of 95 years in prison.
As part of the lawsuit’s settlement, claims involving the conduct of the police department and individual current and former police officers related to Williams — including allegations of corruption, bribery and sex trafficking — will be dismissed and the plaintiffs in the case will submit legal filings that say they faced a substantial risk they could not meet their burden of proof for those allegations.
“Our clients could not be more pleased,” read a statement from Vanessa Baehr-Jones, an attorney with California-based Advocates for Survivors of Abuse.
“This marks a step forward, not only for them but for their community, as they achieve a measure of closure and can begin the healing process,” the statement said. Brentwood based attorney Heather Moore Collins with HMC Civil Rights Law and San Francisco attorney Elizabeth Kramer also served as attorneys in the case.
City officials, who voted to approve the settlement Thursday, said they did so to avoid a potentially “financially catastrophic” judgement. The $28 million will be paid in part by insurance and partly out of the city budget and will not “disrupt or threaten to disrupt ongoing city services,” Johnson City Commissioner Joe Wise said Thursday.
“Based on the potential class action, and the number of horrific crimes committed by Sean Williams, Johnson City was faced with substantial financial risk if this matter proceeded to trial,” a statement from Johnson City said. “While the settlement is significant, it limits Johnson City’s potential exposure which could have been financially catastrophic.”
In an emailed statement, current and former officers named in the suit said the accusations against them were “heinous” and “absolutely false.”
“We want to be absolutely clear, no officers ever engaged in any corrupt conduct of any kind, whatsoever,” the joint statement said. “They never turned a blind eye to Williams in any way.”
“The heinous corruption and sex trafficking claims were absolutely false and the individuals are pleased that Plaintiffs seem to have finally acknowledged the inability to meet the burden of proof,” the statement said.
Johnson City still faces two additional lawsuits related to police misconduct involving victims of sexual assault and a potential federal corruption probe.
Johnson City police did not investigate, arrest, or charge Williams, intentionally destroyed evidence and allowed Williams to destroy evidence in exchange for cash, the lawsuit alleges – echoing claims in the now settled lawsuit that Johnson City police were paid to turn the other way.
Kateri Dahl, a former federal prosecutor who served as a liaison with Johnson City Police Department, filed a separate whistleblower lawsuit in 2022 alleging police failed to investigate sexual assault allegations against Williams then ended Dahl’s contract as she pressed them to take action.
“Johnson City taxpayers can make their own conclusions as to why their government would pay $28 million to settle claims if they are ‘absolutely false,’” Hugh Eastwood, Dahl’s attorney, said in a statement.
Attorneys representing the women who filed suit, referred to in legal filings as “Jane Does,” turned over 520 pages of emails and attachments to the “prosecution team for the federal public corruption investigation of the Johnson City Police Department,” court records said..
The Department of Justice has, for more than a year, declined to confirm or deny any existing investigation.
For context this was in response to someone saying their cybertruck was heavy duty
oh no no NO no no I am sorry my dear @thebirdtm you are NOT underselling one of the most seminal pieces of television of my entire childhood like that on MY watch.
“How is claiming they drowned a Hilux possibly underselling it” GREAT question.
To start with a little disclaimer, Top Gear’s Hilux did not start off, as in the video above, in pristine condition. It started off with nigh-on 300k kms (for you yankees, that’s about 8.4 million Boeing 737 wingspans) and a condition to match.
And it’s only once careless driving around town yielded zilch in given shits…
(look, I found a local newspaper picturing it being driven around!)
…that they decided to drown it. Now, the underselling part: if you told me that they drowned a pickup the first place my mind would go to would be “driving it through a river a bit too deep for it, perhaps as deep as its height, until it stalls and then tugging it back out. You will concede that’s rather different from tying it down on the seashore with the second highest tide in the world…
…and leaving it there until it engulfs the whole truck…
…only for the ropes to snap…
…and for the truck to be lost to the tides for FIVE HOURS.
(and for those wondering, yes, just as promised, well within an hour and the mandatory limits of basic tools and no spare parts, up the mechanic made the thing fire and away the presenter drove it - I must imagine doing a number on his clothes in the process.)
Oh also I would have mentioned the caravan.
Or at least the wrecking ball.
But hey, at least the fire was mentioned.
Still, I feel it’s criminal to leave out how they celebrated it surviving all it did: by parking it at the top of a 23 story building for all to see! :)
Wait NO-
Well, that was uncalled for. Given what it survived, it deserved to rest in a museum instead of being unceremoniously cleared out with the other chunks of public housing that buried it.
Or at least, given that buried it wasn’t…
…to be tumbled down from the rubble utop which it sat…
…and be fueled up.
"be fueled up”, pfft, what for?, I hear you say. And you are right.
Look at that thing, you say.
Let’s be serious now, however pretty of a story it would be that’s not a truck that will do anything remotely in the ballpark of firing up, let alone running.
And again, you are right.
The battery was disconnected.
Sorted that, tho
“You can’t be serious.” Oh darling I sure can! “Well the presenters can’t then” no no, I assure you, it lived. Go see it for yourself! It’s at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieau, England!
I grew up watching Top Gear and it shaped me in many ways. My adoration of old Toyota Hiluxes is one of them.
The Toyota Hilux is absolutely the small god of endurance and defiance (and possibly masochism).
yes I’m reposting about a small god truck are you kidding me
with the way Elon Musk keeps cutting the US’s global south death squad money, i have to imagine that the water cooler talk in the CIA office the last few weeks has been exclusively plotting his assassination
reading through this list and having a laugh at how many of these are just euphemisms for CIa death squads, or are just overt election interference campaigns
“strengthening the political landscape in Bangladesh” death squads. “voter confidence” election interference. “improving learning outcomes in Asia” death squads. “inclusive and participatory political process” election interference. “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills” the most CIA death squad thing ive ever heard
There was this guy in the 1800s - I can’t remember his name, but his name is recorded somewhere - who honestly argued that if given the choice between a beautiful woman and a heron, deep down in their most earnest true heart, every man would rather fuck the heron. And he got mad when people denied this, continuing to deny this what he had decided must be an universal truth, instead of praising him for being the only one who was brave enough to finally say it out loud. Like he really thought that every single person telling him “Jesse what the hell are you talking about” was not only denying him, but denying themselves their true desires and perpetuating the apparently massive cultural lie that herons aren’t fuckable.
Anyway what I’m saying here is that every once in a while whenever you find yourself in a situation where nobody else is willing to agree with something that you consider the most obvious truth, take a moment to meditate on the possibility that perhaps they do mean what they say, and perhaps they are right. Maybe nobody else but you wants to fuck the heron.
Sophia, the Boston woman from 1875 who haunts a lamp I got at Brimfield: what is a stay at home girlfriend, if you please?
me: well, it’s a woman who’s financially supported by the man she’s dating, and she lives with him and usually keeps house and cooks for him
her: and they’re not married?
me: well, no; hence “girlfriend” rather than “wife.” I know that may alarm y-
her: oh calm down I know about Kept Women. he has no legal tie to her, though? she has no sort of standing with him in the eyes of the law? only his word that he’ll follow through?
me: yes
her: and remind me again- you don’t have to be financially dependent on a man anymore, right? there are more than like three careers open to women that will let you support yourself at a decent level now? and society isn’t pressuring you 24/7 to get married and stop working outside the home?
me: yes
her: so these women. CHOOSE to be dependent on a man. who could leave them at any moment without legal consequence. because they don’t like their jobs. the jobs, while imperfect, that let them live on their own, answerable to no-one
me: yes
her: that had better be some absolutely amazing jewelry they can pawn off if he leaves them, then
me: it’s usually not
her: THERE’S NOT EVEN SECURITY JEWELRY?!
me: oh by the way they blame feminism for “having to work”
her:
her: I became fully dependent on my in-laws who hated me, after my husband died two years into our marriage, because I was a 23-year-old orphan with no marketable skills in any avenue besides Running A Household and the only men left unmarried in my social circle were widowers thirty years my senior. I also couldn’t establish lines of credit as a widow because the merchants said my husband dying so soon meant that I didn’t have stable enough income. and that was entirely legal
me: yeah
her: I’m going to go slam some doors please do not bother me
Stop giving men the ability to ruin your life 2k25
Not the point of this post but I’m endlessly amused that Tumblr has rediscovered ghosts as a cultural metaphor for confronting the horrors of the present through the lens of the past in meme format. The essays I could write-
This is potentially life saving information everyone should know.
No you guys this post helped me find my cat. He was missing for almost a month and I’ve had him for over 12 years. After seeing this I put his favorite blanket he always slept on outside hoping he would smell mine or his scent and he was back the next fucking day asleep on it.
When my cat got out, we called and called for him, and then, later that night, I remembered similar advice to this, and so put his little scratching pad, which he adores, on the front porch. Not even half an hour later, I heard a thump, opened the door, and there was his big butt, meowing at me.
Important and vital
I don’t care that I reblogged this today I’m reblogging it again
This is an exception to not being related to writing.
I hope this helps somebody
Whenever someone in one of my buy swap sell groups reports a missing cat, I remember this post and pass the advice on. So far, ALL of the missing cats have come home.
The ‘This is fine’ meme is way older than anyone had expected. This 14th-century manuscript illustration shows the legendary 5th-century British king Vortigern in his burning castle.
im one of the angels assigned to guard god’s throne and i keep shaving a piece of wood off one of the legs so it gets progressively thinner and weaker until one day it will snap like a matchstick and the big man will topple from his seat of power to grace the ground with his holy ass. of course he’s omniscient so he already knows this and will have to banish me from heaven when it happens, but because of free will he has to give me the option to repent right until the very end. we both know i’m not going to do it but the rules that define our very being won’t let us take any other course of action and besides he made me this way, so really the joke’s on him no matter what.
I went on an adventure today to return a pillow to IKEA with my coworker Astrid.
We were having a nice day and got stuck in traffic coming home. On the way her phone rang and she was driving so she declined the call with a sigh. “I feel so bad for him,” she said.
“You know that number?”
She did. It turns out her phone number had previously belonged to a woman named Serena. The man calling was her dad. He had Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember his daughter was dead, so he just called the number he knew was hers.
I was stricken to hear this. “Do you talk to him?”
“Yeah. Sometimes he thinks I’m her and we talk. I have a notebook with facts I’ve learned about her so I can connect with him better. Sometimes he knows I’m not her and I say I’m her friend.”
I struggled with the beauty and humanity of this for a moment. “What’s his name?”
“I don’t know; I just call him Dad.”
We sat in silence and I was overwhelmed with feelings. That she was so kind and thoughtful about this random connection. A man who called and spoke to her with love for the daughter he missed.
“One time,” she added, “he called me just after I had a difficult day with my mom. I knew Serena and her mom had a rocky relationship so I talked to him about my frustrations with my own mother and he gave the following advice: ‘Everyone fails sometimes, even parents; what’s important is to communicate with our loved ones, even when it’s difficult.’
“I have never forgotten that advice and it healed a portion of my heart.”
