Sonoma County prosecutors add charges against ex-convict accused of molesting children

Investigators have identified a second possible victim of a former Sebastopol man charged with felony child molestation and trying to make secret videos, accusations that echo the 1996 case that sent him to prison for videotaping himself sexually assaulting drugged and unconscious women.

Prosecutors filed additional charges last week against Lonnie William Victory, 55, accusing him of sexually molesting a second girl after his release from prison in 2009. It expands a case filed against Victory last November, when he was accused of abusing another girl under the age of 14.

Victory is now charged with committing seven felony crimes sometime after his November 2009 release from prison through February 2013 - a time period when Victory was out on parole, required to check in with parole officers and follow certain rules of conduct.

A spokeswoman with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation declined to answer questions about Victory’s supervision and stated that any information about parole conditions is “not publicly releasable.” He was released from parole supervision in April 2013.

Prosecutors claim one of the girls was between 7 and 10 years old when the alleged crimes occurred and the other child was abused on six occasions when she was 12 and 13, court documents state. The charges are for lewd and lascivious acts against children, a legal statute for inappropriate and unlawful sexual touching.

Victory is also accused of felony privacy invasion by trying to make secret recordings on Oct. 29, 2017, and being in possession of child pornography on June 28, 2018.

Victory will be arraigned Wednesday on the new charges. He faces a maximum exposure of 655 years in prison if he is convicted of all charges and the aggravated terms related to prior felony convictions, according to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office.

Victory served 13 years of a 28-year state prison sentence handed down in 1996 after a jury found he was guilty of sexually assaulting five women in his home. The videos also depicted Victory drugging the women, who later told detectives they had no memory of the assaults.

After his release from prison, prosecutors in 2011 tried to have Victory committed to a state hospital under a provision of the law for sexually violent predators considered dangerous to the public because of a mental disorder. State mental health evaluators didn’t agree on a diagnosis and the petition was dismissed.

Sonoma County Sheriff’s Lt. Tim Duke said the current investigation began in 2018 when detectives found pornography on digital devices in Victory’s possession during an official search.

The case expanded from there and investigators “developed new charges directly related to what we found on those devices,” Duke said. He declined to elaborate further, saying the investigation into Victory’s suspected illegal activities was ongoing.

Victory has used the alias Timothy Gibb Victory, according to the California Department of Justice Megan’s Law database for registered sex offenders.

In 1995, Victory’s girlfriend found some of his homemade sex videos and reported him to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, according to news reports after his arrest.

Victory was working as a use-car salesman and living at his family’s property south of Sebastopol off Bloomfield Road. Detectives searched the home, seizing nearly 200 videotapes as well as prescription drugs and syringes, including one containing a powerful drug cocktail consisting of heroin, morphine and other painkillers and tranquilizers, officials said.

Victory’s attorney defended him by claiming he was on drugs, too, and the women had consented to bondage and sexual acts. Victory was convicted of abusing five of the women detectives identified in the videos.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.