MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A 64-year-old man was convicted as charged Tuesday of raping the 12-year-old daughter of a friend in a rooming house they shared in South Memphis, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.
A Criminal Court jury convicted Willie Lee Hooper on felony counts of rape of a child and aggravated sexual battery. He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 1by Judge Glenn Wright.
The young victim reported the incident in 2016 after her grandmother had taken her a hospital for treatment of emotional problems she developed following the incident that occurred a year earlier.
She said Hooper touched her inappropriately and then raped her in a rooming house on Pueblo Avenue where she, her sister and her mother were staying with Hooper. The victim, now 19, said her younger sister was in the house when Hooper assaulted her.
The case was handled by Asst. Dist. Atty. Lessie Rainey of the District Attorney’s Special Victims Unit (SVU) and by Asst. Dist. Atty. Julie Cardillo of the District Attorney’s Vertical Team 2.
SVU prosecutes cases of rape, child sexual abuse, severe physical abuse of child victims, elder abuse, and vulnerable-adult abuse. SVU was created in 2010 as an expansion of the multi-agency Child Protection Investigative Team (CPIT).
Vertical Team 2 prosecutes cases in General Sessions Division 9 and in Criminal Court Division 2.
