In the span of a week, a Georgia man first arrested in 2019 after he was accused of secretly filming his female roommate in Athens was indicted on rape charges and then sentenced in Troup County to 50 years in prison for a litany of sex crimes.
Avery Hogan Pendergraph, 34, of LaGrange, agreed to a negotiated guilty plea Wednesday on 18 felony counts, Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Herb Cranford said in a news release. Those charges included two counts of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, five counts of sexual exploitation of children, nine counts of invasion of privacy, and one count each of trespassing and possession of eavesdropping devices, better known as spy cameras.
During what Cranford described as a “lengthy guilty plea proceeding,” six of Pendergraph’s victims delivered “impactful and emotional statements” that detailed their years of abuse at the hands of the defendant.
The sentence was the result of an 18-month investigation that involved LaGrange police, Athens-Clarke County police and the GBI, Cranford said. The investigation led authorities in Athens to indict Pendergraph on new charges of rape and aggravated sodomy. Those charges stem from separate incidents against additional victims in Athens beyond the first victim, Pendergraph’s former roommate.
According to Cranford, Pendergraph’s crimes were traced all the way back to 2012 when he began videotaping and photographing women he was dating without their consent. He would upload the photos and videos to porn websites using email accounts and other online accounts that he created with the victims’ actual names. Some of the accounts went so far as to identify the victims’ jobs and where they lived. Pendergraph created hundreds of these accounts, Cranford said.
Pendergraph’s victims also included women with whom he never had a relationship. He created fake nude photos of friends, acquaintances and other women on the internet by taking their photos from social media and editing their faces onto nude bodies, Cranford said. He shared those photos on the internet using the victims’ real names and information.
Pendergraph also hid video cameras in both private and public bathrooms and videotaped men, women and children using the bathroom, Cranford said. He would then edit the videos and share them on the internet using off-shore file-sharing websites. Pendergraph also acquired and shared hundreds of child porn videos and photos that showed the molestation of children and infants.
In the indictment filed by Cranford’s office, which was reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, prosecutors said Pendergraph’s scheme “was intended to exalt himself through voyeuristic control over and sexualized exploitation of women and children.”
Those 18 felony charges only account for Pendergraph’s case in Troup County. On March 2, he was charged in Athens with one count of rape and three counts of aggravated sodomy, online court records show.
According to the indictment, also reviewed by the AJC, the four incidents took place between 2014 and 2019. Two of the counts accuse Pendergraph of forcing himself on a victim while holding her down on a couch, and one accuses him of holding a woman facedown on a bed with a pillow over her head, not allowing her to breathe.
Pendergraph’s arraignment in Athens is scheduled for March 21, online court records show.
Regardless of the outcome of Pendergraph’s case in Athens, he has already been sentenced by a Troup judge to 50 years in prison followed by 20 years on probation, Cranford said.
After the sentence was handed down, Cranford praised the case’s investigators and prosecutors “in obtaining this negotiated lengthy prison sentence.”
Above all, the DA said he “wishes to praise the resilience and courage of the women who were victimized for so long and who hopefully feel some comfort in knowing this predator has received a measure of the justice he deserves.”
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