Woman Pleads Guilty To Statutory Rape, Child Molestation Charges

Editor's note: this story has been updated.

CANTON, GA -- A Canton woman has pleaded guilty to charges related to inappropriate sexual contact she had with a minor under the age of 16.

April Dawn Mears entered guilty pleas on Tuesday, Feb. 7 to charges spelled out in a 44-count indictment handed down in January, said Shannon Wallace, district attorney for the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit.

The plea was made before Cherokee County Superior Court Judge David Cannon Jr.

Mears will spend 18 years in prison without the possibility of parole and once she's release, she will serve the rest of her life on probation, Wallace added.

She will also have to abide by various restrictions imposed upon her as a registered sex offender, court documents show.

"We are pleased with this disposition, and hope that the victim and his family now have some closure,” Wallace said.

The district attorney's office said prosecutors presented evidence during the plea hearing that Mears "engaged in a sexual relationship with a minor child victim for more than a year."

Prosecutors also obtained evidence from Mears' cell phone that showed she had in her possession multiple pornographic images of the victim, Wallace told Patch.

Before the plea agreement, the state also filed a notice that it intended to call at trial "another child who was under 16 years of age when he too had an inappropriate relationship with the defendant," the office said.

According to the Feb. 3 motion filed by the state, the minor child told investigators that Mears sent him nude photos of her between 2012 and 2014 using the social media app Snapchat when he was in the seventh and eighth grades.

Court documents also indicate the minor provided law enforcement with the identities of "a few other boys of similar age who had also received similar images of the defendant."

“Standing up for children is our priority," added Assistant District Attorney Zachary H. Smith, who prosecuted the case on behalf of the state. "This sentence does justice for the victim in this case."

A Cherokee County grand jury indicted Mears on five counts of statutory rape, two counts of aggravated child molestation, two counts of child molestation, one count of enticing a child for indecent purposes, 31 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and three counts of dissemination of pornography.

Mears, 43, was taken into custody in June 2016 after detectives with the Cherokee Sheriff's Office learned she had inappropriate sexual contact with a male victim under the age of 16, the agency previously said.

Scott Poole, Mears' attorney, said his client decided to plead guilty "after prayerfully considering her options with her family."

"A trial would have been difficult for everyone involved and she ultimately decided not to put her family through that," he added. "She sincerely hopes that this resolution will allow all parties to obtain closure and begin to heal."

Photo: April Dawn Mears. Credit: Cherokee Sheriff's Office