Lynchburg man sentenced to six years for child rape

A Lynchburg man’s plea Friday that he thought a girl he had sex with in May was 15 years old did not appear to satisfy the judge.

Randall Hamlet, 18, was sentenced to six years in prison on one count of rape of a child.

“This is the ultimate act of disrespect, when you take a 12-year-old and use her,” Lynchburg Circuit Court Judge Mosby Perrow said.

At a hearing in September, the girl testified she had consensual sex with Hamlet and Cedric Reid, also 18, on May 4 at a home on Wise Street.

The girl testified she snuck out of her mother’s home and stayed out with the men until the next morning.

Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Janell Johnson told the court that both the girl’s mother and the mother’s boyfriend told Hamlet that he was too old to be hanging out with a 12-year-old girl that night.

“This is a 12-year-old who looks like a 12-year-old,” Johnson told the court, adding, “A young lady is simply unable to make the decision … whether this is wise or unwise.”

Hamlet testified that he never met the girl’s mother and that the girl misled him.

“She told me and my codefendant … that she was 15 going on 16,” Hamlet testified.

Perrow sentenced the man to 20 years in prison, but suspended most of the sentence, he said, in consideration of Hamlet’s admission that he had sex with the girl and because he testified against Reid in the September trial.

When he is released from prison, Hamlet must register as a sex offender and can not have any unsupervised interactions with children under 18.