California man behind ‘heinous’ child abuse of 2-year-old boy sentenced to life in prison

A Northern California man convicted of sexually abusing a two-year-old boy was sentenced Thursday by a Placer County judge.

Jeremy Dawn Wilson, 30, of Foresthill was convicted in May of “torture, aggravated sexual assault of a child, forcible sexual penetration of a child, and personal infliction of great bodily injury, among other charges,” the Placer County District Attorney’s Office said.

Judge Michael W. Jones sentenced Wilson to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors during the trial called the crime “particularly heinous.”

The conviction stems from a call in February 2020 in which deputies from the Placer County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a toddler who was “tortured, beaten, drugged and sodomized with an unknown object in his own home,” prosecutors said. The mother of the child discovered the abuse the morning after the attack and rushed her son to the emergency room.

At the hospital, it was documented that the boy had “over a dozen fresh adult bite marks covering his body,” among other serious injuries, the District Attorney’s Office said.

The Placer County Sheriff’s Office immediately investigated the sexual assault and arrested Wilson, the mother’s live-in boyfriend.

After a six-week trial, the jury delivered a guilty verdict, finding that Wilson was a “danger to society” and that he “violated a position of trust” to take out his frustrations on a particularly vulnerable child.

“The attack was an exceptionally depraved crime, one of the worst crimes this county has ever seen,” said Supervising Deputy District Attorney Kalin Everett, who prosecuted the case. “It is irredeemable by society standards, as well by the rule of law. Wilson is now where he belongs, in prison for the rest of his life where he can never hurt another child ever again.”

Jones called the crime one of the worst things he had ever seen, the Placer County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

“When sentencing the defendant to imprisonment for the rest of his life, the judge stated, ‘I am stripping the defendant of all of his power over John Doe and John Doe’s Mother. He will no longer have any power over this family,’” the District Attorney’s Office said.

This story was originally published July 28, 2023 at 11:42 AM.