Chattooga County man receives life sentence after conviction for raping and molesting family member

L.M.J.C District Attorney’s Office

CHATTOOGA COUNTY — A Chattooga County man has received a life sentence for raping and sexually assaulting a minor family member.

Ricky Lamar Blackmon, 46, was convicted on all 7 counts of sexually-based crimes against the child including: Rape, Incest, and Child Molestation, according to the L.M.J.C District Attorney’s Office.

Evidence presented at trial showed that in February 2020, the child victim disclosed to a friend’s mother that Blackmon had been inappropriately touching her.

That individual reported the child’s disclosures to the Department of Family and Children’s Services, who notified local law enforcement and the child was subsequently interviewed by a forensic interviewer.

During that interview, the child disclosed that Blackmon had taken topless pictures of her and had touched her in explicit places on multiple occasions, starting when she was 12 years old.

They say after several years of therapy, the child later disclosed that Blackmon had raped her when she was 13 years old.

Following an interview with Blackmon, he denied any inappropriate contact with the child or taking inappropriate pictures of the child.

However, when detectives requested to search Blackmon’s phone, Blackmon stated he left it at work. They say Blackmon gave his cell phone to law enforcement officers approximately one month after the interview, but evidence showed that he deleted all the data off the phone three days before turning it over.

Text messages were also recovered from the victim’s phone and were presented to the jury.

According to the L.M.J.C District Attorney’s Office, the victim confronted Blackmon about the abuse in the text messages and he never denied the abuse. They say he acknowledged it by his responses.

Following the return of a guilty verdict, Chief Judge Brian House immediately sentenced Blackmon to a life sentence with the first 30 years to be served in prison without the possibility of parole.