Convicted rapist with Hawaii past is sentenced

A former Hawaii man who avoided prosecution in a 2016 sexual assault case here was sentenced Friday in Pennsylvania to 72 years to life in prison for more than two dozen counts of rape, kidnapping, human trafficking, involuntary serv­itude and other crimes.

Seth R. Mull, 31, was described by authorities as a vicious serial predator who found his victims on dating websites and through social media. He initially used his charm to manipulate women before turning increasingly violent, holding them against their will with threats against family members, drugs, rape and even “sex slave contracts” to keep them under his control, prosecutors said.

A Northampton County, Pa., jury convicted Mull on 30 counts at his trial in December after four women testified he assaulted them at hotel rooms, beat and strangled them, burned one of the victims with a blowtorch and, in some instances, prostituted them to other men.

The crimes occurred over an eight-week period in October and November 2017, shortly after the Hawaii charges against Mull were dismissed and he moved to Lower Saucon Township in his home state.

At Friday’s sentencing, Judge Stephen Baratta said Mull’s crimes were “among the worst acts of depravity I’ve seen in my life,” according to The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa.

Mull’s convictions for sexual crimes date back to when he was just 13 years old, according to prosecutors. He has been investigated in other Pennsylvania jurisdictions, New Jersey and San Diego, and more women have come forward with similar allegations since his most recent case was widely publicized, authorities said.

In the Honolulu case, Mull, an unemployed bartender at the time, was indicted on three counts of first-degree sexual assault involving his then-girlfriend. According to court documents, the couple got into an argument at their Waikiki apartment June 1, 2016, after Mull suggested they engage in a “threesome” and “swinger life.” When the woman refused, he forced himself on her, committing two sex acts by “strong compulsion,” the records state.

The following morning, he again forced the woman to have sex, slapping and choking her when she fought back, the records said. Mull reportedly told her, “You knew this would happen if you refused.”

He was released on a $200,000 bond, and on July 6, 2017, a judge granted a defense motion to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be brought again.

Brooks Baehr, spokesman for the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, said the case derailed because the chief witness against Mull was “uncooperative and unresponsive to our efforts to contact her and get her to court to testify.”

Attorney Donald Wilkerson, who represented the defendant in the Hawaii proceedings, said prosecutors had “an extremely weak case and I don’t think they could have proceeded in good faith. There was no way they were going to get a conviction, and the court made the proper decision.”

Wilkerson cautioned against drawing any connections between Mull’s case here and elsewhere, saying: “Whatever happened in Pennsylvania had nothing to do with what happened here. It’s a completely different case.”

Pennsylvania prosecutors say Mull continued his predatory ways even while awaiting sentencing at the Northampton County Jail. In February he was charged with a felony count of promoting prostitution after allegedly using a prison-issued computer tablet to communicate with a female acquaintance, encouraging her to have sex with different men for money and post sexy videos of herself for men to pay to watch.