The former owner of the Seattle Impact soccer team and Mesa resident, Dion Lee Earl, has been found guilty by a Maricopa County jury of kidnapping and sexual assault. Earl, was arrested in October 2017 after an 18-year-old woman and an 21-year-old woman accused him of sexual assault.
Both victims were found through babysitting websites for his three children.
According to court records, on Sept. 12, 2017, the 21-year-old victim was told to go into his bedroom to check on his two girls where she then found him lying on his bed completely nude.
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Earl was accused of pulling the victim down onto the bed with him preventing her from escaping when he began to inappropriately touch her. The victim was able to escape Earl’s grasp by kicking him in the testicles, which he then offered her $100 to keep quiet about the situation.
The second incident happened on Oct. 22, 2017, when the 18-year-old victim was at the defendant’s residence to babysit his children. According to records, Earl embraced the victim in his bedroom which she accepted, but after a long period of time passed she asked to leave. He then fell onto his bed while still embracing her and began to fondle her.
Earl, over the years, has been accused by several women of sexual abuse. As the ADI reported last year, the first accusation was made in 2009 by a woman who worked at a “massage parlor” which the defendant found through Backpage.com, a classified advertising website that was seized in 2004 by United States authorities for sex trafficking. The woman accused Earl of raping her during a massage session.