Man laced teen’s drinks, raped her for 2 days as mom was away, GA officials say
A man convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl over a span of two days when her mother was away, while the teen was incapacitated from drinks he had laced, was sentenced to life in prison, prosecutors in Georgia said.
Coweta County Superior Court Judge Ben Studdard handed the sentence to Brett Tyler Brown, 40, of Sharpsburg, without the possibility of parole on Oct. 24 following a weeklong trial, according to the Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office.
Brown was found guilty of rape, aggravated sexual battery, sodomy, sexual battery and additional charges in connection with the sexual abuse of the teen in March 2020, the office said in an Oct. 28 news release.
Information on Brown’s legal representation was not immediately available.
Brown was in a relationship with the then-teen’s mother when he gave the girl alcoholic drinks, which he spiked with pills to incapacitate her “over a 48-hour period,” prosecutors said.
He then repeatedly sexually assaulted and raped her, according to prosecutors.
“Brown encouraged the victim to drink, including by promising to buy her a new phone, and dismissed the victim’s questions about seeing a dissolving pill in her drink,” prosecutors said.
At one point, Brown left the home where he had been sexually assaulting her and came back with a pill, according to prosecutors.
He is accused of telling the teen the pill was a “safety measure.”
Investigators discovered Brown made online searches about emergency contraception and visited a Walgreens around the time of the abuse, prosecutors said.
One day later, the teen told her mother that Brown had been “handsy,” according to prosecutors.
The teen and her mother then visited her maternal grandparents’ home, where the teen shared that Brown had sexually assaulted her, prosecutors said.
Her mother and grandparents recorded the discussion, but never alerted law enforcement, according to prosecutors, who said they ultimately did not support Brown’s prosecution, despite his prior criminal history.
Instead, the teen and her friend’s mother went to the authorities after the teen told her friend’s mother about what happened the next day, on March 30, 2020, the district attorney’s office said.
When law enforcement was notified, Brown texted an apology to the teen, according to prosecutors, in which he blamed his actions on alcohol, writing:
“There are no words at all to say for what happened. I’m so sorry. I am very sorry for everything. That wasn’t me, that was alcohol. I would never ever ever hurt you like that sober. I hope one day you can forgive me. If there was anything I could do to make it better I would.”
In August 2023, Brown was taken into custody as a fugitive in Panama City Beach , Florida, by the Bay County Sheriff’s Office, according to a news release.
He was arrested after multiple felony warrants were issued for him out of Coweta County, Georgia, for charges of aggravated sexual battery, sexual battery, incest and furnishing alcohol to a minor, the sheriff’s office said.
More than a year earlier, in April 2022, Brown was arrested in Coweta County in connection with the rape of the teen, the Newnan Times-Herald reported. Coweta County is about a 35-mile drive southwest of Atlanta.
Investigators with the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office had to secure a search warrant to obtain the recording that was on the teen’s mother’s phone, in which she described the sexual abuse, according to the district attorney’s office.
“The recording of the victim’s conversation with her mother and grandparents was particularly compelling evidence because it captured her real-time emotion as she described her abuse and it captured her family’s effort to discourage her from seeking justice through the judicial system,” prosecutors said.
She is now “doing well,” according to the district attorney’s office, and is supported by her father, brother and friends.
“Where this victim’s mother and maternal grandparents failed her, the victim’s friends, the investigators, the prosecution team, and the jury delivered her justice,” prosecutors said.
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