JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — The City of Johnson City will pay $28 million to settle a lawsuit filed by multiple women who claimed Johnson City police had failed to properly investigate sexual assault allegations against downtown resident Sean Williams between 2019 and 2022.

Johnson City Commissioners approved the settlement proposal Thursday night. Plaintiffs will move for dismissal in exchange for the settlement and defendants, including several current and former police officers, can maintain their denials of allegations against the police department.

“The Plaintiffs’ attorneys will dismiss all claims and allegations of corruption, bribery and sex trafficking against the City and Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) officers,” a statement from the city said.

Commissioner Joe Wise said the lawsuit’s consequences and cost “made him feel sick,” but he supports moving forward with the settlement.

“So this is a civil issue,” Wise said. “It’s not a criminal issue. And so the class action has this potential of even if everything goes our way, except for one thing, somewhere along the line, the potential cause that would make a settlement seem like peanuts someday in the future. This sort of settlement is one with significant consequences, but it is not catastrophic.”

Wise clarified that “not catastrophic” means the settlement will not threaten or disrupt “core city services.”

Vanessa Baehr-Jones, who led the team of plaintiffs’ attorneys in filing the suit, spoke to News Channel 11 Thursday night — more than a year-and-a-half after the suit was first filed in June 2023. She called the settlement “the end of a long journey” for her clients, who include not just victims of Williams but also up to 400 other women who reported sexual violence to the JCPD over a five-year period.

The so-called “Jane Does” lawsuit, filed in June 2023, alleges that Johnson City police overlooked several years of serial rape activity between at least 2019 and 2021 by Williams, who was a downtown Johnson City resident and business owner. It says JCPD engaged in a conspiracy to shield Williams from proper investigation and prosecution, in part for financial benefit.

“I made a commitment when I began representing my clients in this case that I would do everything within my power to bring to light what happened to them,” Baehr-Jones said. “And now, over nearly two years later, we have done exactly that.”

She said the settlement, which had been in negotiations for a couple of months, allows her clients to “have finally been able to achieve some amount of closure and (they) can now begin the process of healing.”

Jonathan Lakey, one of the defense attorneys representing the city, told commissioners Thursday that a settlement “will allow the city and its citizens an opportunity to move forward if this body approves it.

“The amount of the settlement for all for both sides of the case would be a total of $28 million, which would be in part covered by your liability insurer.”

Lakey also spoke of the plaintiffs’ agreement to dismiss “that portion of their lawsuit alleging that the city or the Johnson City Police Department or any of its officers were corrupt or took bribes, or that they were involved with Sean Williams in any way to traffic his victims.”

In fact, Lakey said, the settlement requires the plaintiffs to “specifically state that based on what they’ve learned to date, there was a substantial risk that they could not support these claims.”

The city and all defendants had consistently denied all claims, and attorneys representing the individual defendants released a statement calling all the claims “absolutely false.”

The city still faces a second civil lawsuit related to Williams, filed in 2022 by a former U.S. attorney who claims she was terminated from a role with the city after raising concerns about Williams and urging police leadership to investigate him more thoroughly.

Commissioner Jenny Brock said the lawsuit is a “blemish” on Johnson City and that one of the commission’s primary functions is to focus on “risk management.”

“This has been a long-term thing that the city has been dealing with… and on both sides, both plaintiffs and the defendants, and it is my opinion that we need to put this to bed and to move forward,” Brock said.

“We know what the cost is if we settle,” she said. “It’s unknown what that cost could be a year-and-a-half from now or two years, and it goes through the court system.”

Williams, meanwhile, is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 24 after a November guilty verdict in the first of what are expected to be several sexual assault criminal actions against him.

Baehr-Jones said the class action status of the settlement will be publicly filed, and eligible victims who haven’t previously been associated with the lawsuit will have a chance to join the class.

“This is not a closed door to the class,” she said. “This is actually the beginning of for the reporter classes at the beginning of that class action settlement process.”

Baehr-Jones said it took a team of talented attorneys to reach the point of a settlement. She said she was very happy for the plaintiffs who had been through the entirety of the case.

“The parties have entered into the settlement agreement and today the commissioners voted to approve it, and it’s a really big step for my clients. It’s … been a long and hard process for them, and this is a day where they can have some closure and also just know that all of the work they did resulted in this outcome.”

Both Brock and Wise agreed that the financial risk the lawsuit imposed on the city was more significant than any lawsuit Johnson City has experienced.