Delco man sentenced to decades in state prison for series of rapes targeting women walking alone
Prosecutors said they had never seen a case like that of DeJohn Lee, who raped three women and attempted to rape a fourth in Chester. He was sentenced to 40 to 80 years in state prison.
A Chester woman who was raped by a man prosecutors have described as a violent, methodical predator held back tears as she described how the assault will forever haunt her.
She was pregnant when DeJohn Lee attacked her in 2016, and a week later she miscarried, a direct result, she said, of the trauma he inflicted on her.
“I struggle every day. I don’t like to be around a lot of people,” she said last week at Lee’s sentencing in a series of four sexual assaults in which he confronted women walking alone in secluded parts of the city. “Now, I only walk down streets where I see a lot of cars. That way, I know if it happens again, if someone grabs me from behind, there will be witnesses.”
Lee, 27, was sentenced to 40 to 80 years in state prison after being convicted of raping and robbing three women and attempting to rape a fourth.
Deputy District Attorney Kristen Kemp urged Delaware County Court Judge James Bradley to sentence Lee to up to 120 years, saying Lee had left his victims with a lifelong burden and deserved a similar punishment.
“In my over 16 years of doing this, I have never had a case like DeJohn Lee,” Kemp said. “This amount of violent, weapons-based, gunpoint rapes is unusual. This is extreme. He is extreme.”
Lee targeted the women within a few-block radius of his apartment in Chester, Kemp said. The attacks, she said, showed a “predatory deliberation”: He waited until the women were walking alone, dragged them into secluded areas, and robbed and raped them.
In some of the cases, Lee threatened to kill the women if they called the police. He stole or discarded their cell phones so they couldn’t call for help and, in some instances, tried to wipe his DNA from their bodies.
Bradley, in handing down his sentence, seemed to credit a request from Lee’s attorney, Sherri Eyer, to give him at least a chance of being released from prison one day.
Eyer told the judge Lee showed signs of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, conditions that also affected his mother. She said Lee was a “product of our broken foster system” who had little contact with his mother, never knew his father, and was raised from a young age by a foster sister who left him unsupervised and without structure in his life.
Instead, Eyer said, Lee found structure and support in Chester’s street-gang culture. She said Lee was 18, “barely an adult,” when he committed these crimes, and has benefited greatly from the medication and treatment he has received at Norristown State Hospital.
Kemp, the prosecutor, said she doubted that Lee could ever be rehabilitated and warned that if released, he would continue to attack women.
“Mark my words, Your Honor: You let this man out of jail, and you will have another victim,” she said. “This is someone who has lost any right to live in civilized society.”
Lee, who faces five additional sexual assault charges involving other victims, will return to court on Dec. 17, when lawyers are scheduled to discuss how to proceed with those cases.