Former Democratic congressional aide Donny Ray Williams Jr., who was disfigured in an acid attack, will not serve jail time for sexually assaulting two women and threatening a third, The Washington Post reported.
After hearing arguments from the prosecution about how Williams has suffered in the aftermath of the unrelated 2013 acid attack- including over 20 surgeries and more to come- Judge Robert E. Morin reluctantly sentenced Williams to 4-and-a-half years suspended sentence.
"He was a victim of an independent crime and has serious medical issues," Morin said at a D.C. Superior Court hearing last week, according to The Post.
The sentence was part of a plea deal offered to the defendant if he agreed to plead guilty to the sexual assaults, which he did last year. But the prosecutor's sympathy for Williams does not come at the expense of the victims.
One of them, who attended the hearing, was an intern in Washington D.C. in 2010 when she met Williams, a congressional aide and former staff director for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee, the newspaper reported. She thought he could help her find a job.
Things did not turn out that way and the woman told police Williams raped her after putting a sedative in her drink.
"He gave me a random dose of drugs and risked my life," she wrote in a letter read to the court. "After the assault, I moved away, and he continued to harass me and threatened me to drop the charges. This crime has caused me fear, pain and a financial burden."
What Williams did "was done with foresight, intentionally and deliberately," Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Marcus-Kurn said according to The Post.
Williams was indicted for the assaults in 2012. A year later he was permanently disfigured when a stranger stopped him while walking down a street and tossed liquid in his face. It didn't take long for Williams to feel an intense burning sensation all over his body.
"I thought I was going to die," he said in a recent interview.
The attack left him with second and third-degree burns. He's also blind in one eye and can barely see out the other, the newspaper reported. Even after two months recovering in the hospital and 20 surgeries he still has more "life-threatening" surgeries to go, Marcus-Kurn said.
Williams was a rising political star before he allegedly assaulted two women and threatened another person. He worked for a year for the Obama administration in 2009 as a congressional contact for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the newspaper reported.
He also worked for several Democrat congress members, including Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky and senators Joseph I. Lieberman from Connecticut and Mary Landrieu from Louisiana.
As far as his committing the assaults is concerned, Williams previously said he "never consciously thought about giving anybody a drug who didn't know they were getting the drug," The Post reported.
He said he pleaded guilty to focus on his health and not a trial, but it appears he now feels more remorse for his alleged actions. Williams has to attend counseling, spend five years on probation and register as a sex offender for 10 years as a condition of his plea.
No arrests have been made in Williams' acid attack and the case remains under investigation.
Former Democratic Aide Donny Ray Williams Jr., Disfigured By Acid Attack, Skirts Prison For Sexually Assaulting 2 Women
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