Franklin Man Sentenced to 42 Years for Sex Crimes Against Minor

A Franklin man was sentenced to 42 years in prison for sex crimes against a minor, in what prosecutors and victims say is a decades-long pattern of abuse.

Samuel “Sammy” Linneaus Sylvester was sentenced on March 19 for seven counts of statutory rape and two counts of sexual battery by an authority figure. His sentence includes eligibility for parole in 12 years. He will also be added to the state’s sex offender registry.

Sylvester, known in Christian music and local church communities as both a music producer and youth pastor, was found guilty of the crimes on May 1, 2024 by a Williamson County jury. The charges stem from his grooming and sexual assault of a then 17-year-old girl who believed at the time believed she was having an affair with a married man.

Sylvester has spent the last few month’s in Nashville's Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility, a state-run inmate facility where he has been undergoing dialysis and is in need of a kidney transplant. It's unclear if he will remain incarcerated at DeBerry or if he will be transferred to another facility.

“The Office of the District Attorney is pleased with the 42 year sentence handed down by Judge [Joseph] Woodruff,” the 21st Judicial District said in a statement to the Williamson Scene. “We encourage anyone who is a victim of sexual assault to reach out to your local law enforcement agency to report this crime.”

Assistant District Attorney Mary Katharine Evins served as the lead prosecutor, with ADA Jennifer Mason telling the Williamson Scene that it was an “incredibly complicated” case to prosecute due to delayed reporting, a challenge with many cases where children have been victimized.

“It's never too late to come forward, and so I just want people to know that it's not impossible,” Mason said. “It may have its difficulties, It may make it harder because of the lapse in time, but it's not impossible, and so I just want them to feel comfortable reporting it to law enforcement and let law enforcement do their job.”

Sylvester did not testify during the March 19 sentencing hearing, but did testify during the trial, and maintains his innocence. Sylvester’s attorney Brent Horst declined to comment for this story, and it’s unclear if he will appeal the ruling.

In 1997, Sylvester entered an alford plea in a Meeker County, Minn. court on one count of criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree, stemming from a 1996 incident for which he was sentenced to probation.

Those Minnesota court records were submitted as evidence in Sylvester's sentencing hearing, but at the time of publishing, the Williamson Scene has not received the requested documents from the court.

In 2016, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge in Williamson County stemming from incidents that occurred in 2014 and 2015. He was also found guilty in 2017 for a probation violation. In both cases, he was sentenced to probation.

Survivors speak

The March 19 sentencing hearing saw testimony from seven witnesses, including multiple victims.

The Williamson Scene will only be identifying one of those victims by name, 32-year-old Abby George Ware, because she voluntarily spoke to news media in 2024 following Sylvester's conviction, partially in hopes that her story could inspire other potential victims to come forward and seek justice.

Ware met Sylvester around 15 years ago when she was 16-years-old and performing at a musical competition at the Williamson County Fair. He introduced himself as a music producer who could help with her burgeoning career. Sylvester gained the trust of Ware’s parents, and was even able to get her out of school as part of a work based learning program where he paid Ware to work with him.

“I turned 17 in the time that I was working with him, and it just became ugly, and it got uglier and uglier as time went on, and he became very possessive and aggressive in his nature to control my life from every angle to the point of spending a lot of time, even in that I can use that word for my parents as well, but gaining their trust in every aspect, giving them a lot of confidence in who he was as a person,” Ware said, calling Sylvester “a great con artist.”

Ware said that Sylvester made comments to her including “you're going to be mine one day. You're not going to know when, and you're not going to know how, but you will be mine one day.” He talked of a foreign friend who had a private jet and made statements that she didn’t want to “end up” like his sister who he said had been raped and murdered in his home country of Trinidad and Tobago.

One night Sylvester took Ware to a Franklin hotel to mix music they had recorded. Then he did something he’d never done before – he took her keys and phone.

“I saw a giant black drum bag, and I just knew that I was going to go in it. It sounds dramatic, but that's what I knew in my heart, that I wasn't going to see my family anymore,” Ware said in 2024. “I paced the bathroom trying to figure out what I was going to do, and I came out and I seduced him and sat on a chair, my phone and my keys were right beside him, and I leaned forward and grab them very quickly, and I kneed him in the balls as hard as I could and I took off. I ran down the stairs, and this was after nine months of being involved with this man. I got in my car, and he chased me down the stairs, and when I got to my car, he slammed his hands on the roof of my car, and I drove home as fast as I could.”

Ware stopped associating with Sylvester and told her parents that he had been “inappropriate” with her but planned on never telling them about the abuse that at the time she believed was simply a 17-year-old having an affair with a man in his 40s.

“He made me believe that I was having an affair with a married man. That's what grooming looks like,” Ware told reporters in 2024. “Everything he did between the day that I met him and the day that it ended was his plan. From meeting me and moving on, he found every weakness that I had and exploited it.”

Recounting instances of being followed by Sylvester Ware said, “I spent 10 years of my life scared to go places.”

Ware became a mother and said that one day Sylvester approached her in the parking lot of a doctors office while she was with her child.

“That was my final, ‘hell no,” Ware said.

She filed a police report and gained an order of protection against Sylvester, actions which led her to learn that she wasn’t his only victim.

“In the process of that I learned, after believing for years that I was the only one, that there was a 12-year-old victim that had already come out, and I just couldn't breathe,” Ware said in 2024. “I couldn't have fathomed him doing anything that he did to me to a 12-year-old little girl.”

That victim had made a report around five years after she was assaulted in 2010 by Sylvester, who was a family friend. For that he was charged in 2019 with two counts of rape of a child and one count of aggravated sexual battery. But, a May 2023 trial resulted in a hung jury and mistrial. It's unclear at this time if the DA's office will attempt to retry that case, which remains open.

Ware's father testified “the reality is evil exists.”

“When a forty-year-old man with a wife and two children who shows you and your family he was what he said he was, tells you he and his wife were youth pastors and he earned your trust tells you, ‘I will treat your daughter just like I treat my daughter.’ You're not thinking he's going to do what he did to Abby,” Ware’s father said.

Ware’s hope of reaching other victims in her 2024 press conference paid off. At the sentencing hearing, it was revealed that another victim had come forward. A now 22-year-old woman, came forward last year after seeing Ware tell her story on the news. That woman testified that she had also been sexually assaulted by Sylvester when she was 15 as Sylvester was dating her mother.

The woman described how Sylvster had first touched her butt while swimming at a pool. Later she says he lied to her, saying that her mother “gave him permission” to pick her up from their Columbia home. Instead of taking the girl to her mother, she described during the testimony that he took her to a Franklin apartment where he chased her around a couch before subduing her in a hug and molesting her as she tried to fight back. Due to the statute of limitations, Sylvester was never charged in those incidents.

Another victim who testified in the sentencing hearing was Slyvester’s now 42-year-old niece, who described how she came to the U.S in 1999 from Trinidad and Tobago, spending Christmas break with her uncle in Minnesota.

She testified that throughout that visit, Sylvester repeatedly raped her, sometimes in front of his young children and wife without their knowlege.

The assaults happened just weeks after she turned 18 while she was in a “state of intense grief” as she mourned the recent death of her sister.

The victim said that Sylvester initiated the sexual assaults as a way to “console” her as she grieved.

“My uncle has been doing this for a very long time, and he has hurt a lot of women. And I would like it to stop,” she said tearfully. “He deserves to be in jail, and I wish that I had the courage to have come forth when it first happened to me, but I didn't, but I’m speaking about it now.”

Ware has since met Sylvester’s other known victims, forming a bond that she said is akin to a sisterhood.

“Probably one of the most life changing things that's happened to me and for me over the course of this entire process is just gaining these women as sisters,” Ware told the Williamson Scene. “Honestly, I don't know how else to put it, but when you're sitting in a room with women who when they're telling their story, you know exactly what they're saying because you've lived it, there's just not a feeling like that.

“I wish that I could have ended this part of the suffering of life sooner, for myself, and just to know that there are so many people out there that want to help you, that believe you, that you know, want to fight for you,” Ware said. “The system itself is challenging to walk into, and I didn't really know what it felt like to be fought for until I sat in that courtroom and had those women sitting there fighting for me.”

Ware echoed the prosecutor’s hopes for any other potential victims to come forward, while also hoping that anyone who may have more information about Sylvester’s past will speak up.

“I think that there are some people that have been too afraid to say anything, that know him and know him well, and I also that's a big prayer for me, that that the people who do know what kind of person he was are willing to, you know, accept it and are willing to get help if they've lived under that.”