41 years in prison for rapist in Athens
ATHENS — A 26-year-old serial rapist who was a teenager when he began attacking women could be around retirement age when he is released from prison.
Sean J. Lawson Jr., of Athens, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years in prison for sexually assaulting three women in that city and another in Lancaster, plus one year in prison for an unrelated probation violation. Of the total 41-year sentence ordered by Athens County Common Pleas Judge George P. McCarthy, 32 are mandatory.
The sentence includes 29 years for all charges in an 11-count indictment to which Lawson pleaded guilty Tuesday, plus 11 years for the Lancaster rape, which was charged separately in a bill of information and included with the Athens cases as “a continuing course of conduct.”
Lawson initially pleaded not guilty to the 11-count indictment that charged him with sexual assaults on June
11, 2006, when he was 15 and a student in the Alexander school district in the Athens area, and on June 20 and Dec. 12 in 2015.
Lawson also has admitted to two other uncharged sexual assaults in Athens, Athens County Prosecutor Keller J. Blackburn said, including attacking a girl
on a bike path in 2007 and a woman in the Uptown area in 2013.
“To all the victims, I am sorry and I hope they can move on,” Lawson said in court.
The Lancaster rape was reported March 12. Lancaster police obtained Lawson’s DNA, which matched the profile of the man sought in the Athens rapes in 2006 and 2015.
The woman that Lawson admitted to raping in Lancaster shared in court the impact the crime had on her.
“You can’t put a price on being raped until it happens to you,” she said. “I thought I had it bad but ... those girls, I feel for them more than I feel for myself because they went for so many years without any justice, without any healing.”
In a letter, the woman who was raped by Lawson in 2006 told the court she still has nightmares.
“I feel damaged and I will never be the same,” she wrote. “It will affect me the rest of my life.”
Lawson’s lawyer, Andrew Sanderson, said Lawson does not understand why he attacked the victims, calling him an otherwise law-abiding citizen who “struggled to control a monster that made his conduct go off the rails.”
Lawson, ordered by the judge to register for life as a Tier III sex offender after prison, plans to receive counseling in prison, Sanderson said.
Lawson, who is married with one child and another on the way, had been enrolled since April in a jail-diversion program for a felony charge in November of improperly having a firearm in his vehicle while driving drunk.