James Coleman Thompson
Prosecutor James Brooks said the fact that a prominent Lookout Mountain was sexually abused as a child should have kept him from offending himself.
James Coleman Thompson is set to be sentenced on Friday at 2 p.m. after he earlier pleaded guilty to bringing children to a location in Alabama and Louisiana for sex.
Both sides have agreed on a 20-year sentence. That has to be approved by Judge Travis McDonough.
Prosecutor Brooks said, "The government has no reason to doubt the defendant’s own claims to having been sexually abused but offers the following response. If the defendant is in fact a product of the cycle of sexual abuse, he more than anyone, with an abundance of resources, from one of the wealthiest communities in the nation, should have known the consequences of sexual abuse and should have resisted the urge to offend.
"Repetition of generational abuse is neither mitigating nor excusable. Indeed, all wrongs are cyclical: poverty to theft; addiction to distribution; and trauma to violence. Unfortunately, culture and custom offer little resistance: children are thoughtlessly groomed to violence; social media grooms to early sexuality; and the relief between the peaks of wealth and valleys of poverty have only increased.
"Notwithstanding the cycle of abuse and a complacent culture, the community requires the individual to disrupt the pattern. When he abdicates, it becomes the responsibility of the Courts and the prisons to stand up and address it. The imposition of a 20-year prison sentence is where justice starts in this case.
"From here, the defendant must serve the sentence, and the victims can now hopefully begin to heal. The goal of the lengthy prison term is to exact a penalty consistent with the defendant’s conduct, commensurate with the ongoing suffering of the victims and their families, to specifically deter this defendant from reoffending, and to generally deter all like-minded potential offenders."
The prosecutor also said, "To be clear, this sentence is intended to outpace the defendant’s capacity to reoffend." Thompson is 72 and suffers from a number of health issues, it was stated.