CARROLL COUNTY, Ga. — A metro Atlanta man was sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to raping a 12-year-old girl nearly two decades after he was convicted of another rape, a district attorney for the Coweta Judicial Circuit said.
On Monday, 42-year-old William Vinson pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated child molestation, two counts of statutory rape, two counts of child molestation, one count of aggravated sexual battery, and one count of failure to register as a sex offender, according to a release from the DA's office.
But for Vinson, it wasn't the first time he had pleaded guilty to aggravated sex crimes.
In 1994, when Vinson was just 13 years old, he was arrested after a 30-year-old woman reported he knocked on the door of her home before holding a shotgun at her head and raping her, the DA's release states.
In October of that year, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 15 years on probation. He was released from prison on March 27, 2007, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections -- meaning he served nearly 13 years of his 15-year sentence.
For his latest arrest, a 12-year-old girl reported to her middle school teacher that on Feb. 13, 2022, Vinson raped her at her family's Carroll County home, according to the release. A day later, deputies went to the address that Vinson had registered as a sex offender but did not find him.
Investigators found out by interviewing the victim that Vinson first approached her when she was 11 and made "sexually suggestive comments about her body," according to the district attorney. They also discovered that Vinson displayed "grooming behavior" by purchasing items for the girl and sending her sexually explicit text messages, threatening to kill himself if the girl ever told anyone about the behavior.
"For reasons that may be beyond normal human understanding, he is clearly a sexual predator and has been since he was a teenager," prosecutors said in the release. "The sentence of life with the possibility of parole followed by 19 years in prison in this case reflects the DA Office's intention to incarcerate Vinson for as long as possible without requiring this child victim to experience the re-traumatization of testifying in a jury trial."
Authorities found out that Vinson left Carroll County after the victim had disclosed his sexual abuse. Georgia's sex offender law states that an offender must disclose a change of address within 72 hours of moving. Because Vinson violated this law, the sheriff's office was able to obtain an arrest warrant for violating the sex offender registry laws in March 2022, which allowed them to take action to find Vinson.
The district attorney's office also noted that Vinson was still on probation for the 1994 rape when he committed the 2022 sex crimes.
"While the registration requirements and probation conditions obviously did not prevent Vinson from committing these crimes, this case shows that long probationary periods and sex offender registration are extremely important to provide our communities with some protection from the most dangerous sex offenders who are released from prison," prosecutors said.
The DA's office also said this case highlights several important aspects of Georgia's law, which include the creation of mandatory minimum sentences without the possibility of parole for aggravated sex crimes such as rape, the state's ability to prosecute juvenile offenders for sex crimes as adults, and the "importance of long probationary periods and sex offender registration requirements for offenders convicted of aggravated sex crimes."
Vinson will serve at least 30 years in prison before he can even become eligible for consideration for parole.
