Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Hearing waived in sex trafficking
Case against Willistown man will now move to Common Pleas Court
EAST GOSHEN >> The Willistown man who authorities said engaged in a sexual triangle with a 16-year-old girl and her “teenage” boyfriend that was videotaped and photographed waived his right to a preliminary hearing on the charges, including felony sex trafficking, against him Wednesday.
Lawrence “Larry” W. Jamieson Jr. appeared briefly before Magisterial District Judge Thomas Tartaglio of East Goshen, accompanied by his attorney, Peter Kratsa of the West Chester law firm of MacElree Harvey. Asked if he wanted to have a hearing to contest the charges he faces, Jamieson told the judge he did not.
The case will now move to Common Pleas Court. Often when defendants waive their preliminary hearings, it signals that they intend to resolve the charges against them without a trial, either through a negotiated plea or by pleading guilty and asking a judge to set the sentence.
Jamieson, a member of a prominent Main Line family who runs a small construction company, did not address the court about the charges beyond acknowledging that he would waive his rights to a hearing. Dressed in a gray V-neck sweater and a white shirt and wearing reading glasses, Jamieson was returned to Chester County Prison, where he has been held on $1 million bail since his arrest in August.
Attending the proceeding was the mother of the teenage girl at the center of the case. She did not address the court.
Jamieson, 57, of Laurel Circle, Malvern, and John Christopher Brown, 25, of Norristown, are charged with offenses related to the relationship they engaged in with the teenager, whose mother discovered the relationship from text messages on her daughter’s cellphone. In a search of his house in Willistown’s hunt country, police found a significant stash of child pornography allegedly be-
longing to Jamieson, with more than 50,000 illegal images.
According to the criminal complaints filed against the men by Willistown Detective Stephen Jones, Jamieson introduced the young girl to Brown in February 2015 when she was 15. Jamieson told the girl that Brown was only 17 years old, a high school student like her, even though he was 23 years old at the time. Authorities said Brown changed his appearance to make him seem much younger than he actually was.
When police interviewed the girl, who is now 17, on Aug. 2, she told them that she had been dating Brown for over a year, and that he was “everything she ever wanted in a boyfriend.”
Jones said he learned that Jamieson had begun arranging for Brown to meet the victim, whose name was not included in the complaint, in late 2014. He provided Brown with a fake age, fake birthdate, and fake information, including that he attended a cyber school, in order to gain the girl’s confidence. Brown agreed to meet the girl and seduce her so that he could have sex with her and persuade her to have sex with Jamieson. He also agreed to exchange photos and video of the sexual
encounters with the older man.
The affidavit contends that between March 2015 and July, Brown had sex with the girl approximately 20 to 50 times, at both his house and Jamieson’s. The encounters were arranged by Jamieson, and would drive the victim to meet Brown, asking Brown to record the acts and send them to him via text message and email.
Jamieson also convinced Brown to press the girl to have sex with him, and sometimes watched the sexual encounters between the alleged victim and Brown. The girl told police that she had sex with Jamieson on multiple occasions between March and July, when the affair was uncovered.
The charges against them include sex trafficking in minors, patronizing a victim of sex, sexual abuse of children for creating and possessing child pornography, sexual assault, conspiracy, and related charges. The charge of trafficking in minors is a first-degree felony punishable by 20 years in prison. It has rarely, if ever, been charged in Chester County.
Anyone with information should contact Jones at 610-251-0222. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Megan King of the DA’s Child Abuse Unit.