After pleading guilty to attempted sexual abuse of his daughter during her 21st day trip to Las Vegas in January 2023, John Jessup, a former Hancock County commissioner in Indiana, was sentenced on Thursday to six to fifteen years in prison.
According to court records, Jessup took his daughter Rachel Keesling to Harrah’s Las Vegas to drink and gamble. According to the prosecution, Jessup encouraged her to continue drinking despite her feeling ill and gave her three Long Island iced coffee. After taking her to a band team, Keesling became so drunk that she had to be taken back to the hotel in a chair.
Eventually, Keesling discovered her parents sexually assaulting her in their hotel room. When Jessup began to move, she stopped. He was immediately accused of sexual assault, but the Clark County District Attorney’s Office reduced the demand to attempted physical abuse after reaching a plea deal with him.
Jessup is required to provide a minimum of six years in prison, file as a sex offender, and be prohibited from contacting his child or other family members for life as part of the plea bargain.
My career feels like it’s been destroyed since my natural father sexually assaulted me on January 26, 2012, Keesling said in court during her speech before punishment. Despite the accusations, she claimed she officially identified herself after Jessup was elected to the Hancock City Council.
She continued to state that she is still processing a lot of the assault’s emotional effects and that she has changed her past name.
Jessup, 50, was still in the state commissioner’s office at the time of the incident, and he eventually ran for town council while the charges arose. He has since resigned from the place he was elected to. He claimed in judge that he no longer was the same person.
” Parents are supposed to guard their kids,” the phrase goes. When they are vulnerable, they are not supposed to break them, according to Deputy District Attorney Morgan Thomas.
