Attorney General Alan Wilson announces Rock Hill man gets 46 years in prison for child sexual abuse

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced that Jeremy Lewis, 23, of Rock Hill, today entered an Alford plea to multiple sex charges against children. An Alford plea is a legal term for a guilty plea in which a defendant maintains his innocence but acknowledges that the prosecution has enough evidence to likely secure a conviction.

His plea was to two counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct with a Minor, First Degree, and seven counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, First Degree. This case was scheduled to go to trial this week.

On November 13, 2020, Investigator Alex Clark with the York County Sheriff’s Office received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding the uploading of child sexual abuse material to an online application. Included in this upload were commonly traded images and videos of child sexual abuse material, as well as material that appeared to be self-produced. These self-produced images and videos memorialized the sexual assault of a child under the age of one year.  

Further investigation revealed that the IP address associated with the uploads was at a residence in Rock Hill that was associated with Lewis. Inside the home, law enforcement discovered furniture that appeared in the images and videos of the sexual assault. Law enforcement was ultimately able to identify the child. When Lewis was interviewed about the images and videos, he admitted to receiving child sexual abuse material online, but denied sexually assaulting a child. However, tattoos that were visible in the videos were consistent with tattoos on Lewis’s hands.

Judge R. Keith Kelly in York County sentenced Lewis to a total of 46 years in prison. He received 25 years on each count of Criminal Sexual Conduct with a Minor, First degree, to run concurrently with each other. He received a sentence of three years on each of the seven counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, First degree, all of which were consecutive to each other and to the CSC with a Minor charges. He was given credit for 1710 days already served.

Attorney General Wilson gives a special thanks to the hard work of the York County Sheriff’s Office on this case. As a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the York Sheriff’s Office works tirelessly to help the Attorney General’s Office protect the children of South Carolina.