Former North Texas Youth Sports Referee Sentenced To 30 Years In Prison For Raping 13-Year-Old Girl
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - A Fort Worth sex offender with a history of kidnapping charges pleaded guilty Monday, Feb. 28, to aggravated sexual assault of a child and aggravated kidnapping related to the 2015 rape of a 13-year-old girl.
James Williams, 55, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The Tarrant County DA's Office explained the victim was walking home from a park near the Meadowbrook Golf Course in Fort Worth, when a man stopped his car on the street as he passed her.
He came up behind her, grabbed her in a chokehold and put her in his car. He told her to not scream and to turn off her phone. He drove off with her in his car.
Eventually, he stopped the car, ordered her to remove her clothes and raped her, the DA's Office said. He later left her in a vacant lot near her home.
The Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) linked DNA from the rape to Williams in 2018.
Williams, who has a history of multiple kidnappings, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2016 for the attempted kidnapping of a different girl.
It was the conviction in that case that led to his DNA being entered into CODIS.
He also violated sex offender registration requirements.
During the time between his sentence in 2016 and his arrest in 2019, he worked as a youth sports referee in Granbury and Godley ISDs without disclosing his sex offender status.
He was also arrested in 2012 for allegedly trying to kidnap a 12-year-old girl, but the case was no billed by a grand jury.
Williams was also sentenced in 1994 to nine months in jail in Hawaii after pleading no contest to kidnapping a woman there.
