COLUMBUS, Ohio – Natalie Shull recently received a call from the probation office in the U.S. District Court in Columbus.
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The office wanted her opinion about what should happen to former State Highway patrolman Bryan Lee.
Lee was on patrol in 2010 when Shull drove her car off the road after a night of drinking. Instead of arresting her for drunken driving, Lee cuffed Shull’s hands behind her back, bent her over the front of his cruiser — making sure he was out of view of his car’s dash-cam video recorder — and slipped his hands inside her shirt to grope her bare breasts while rubbing his crotch against her hands.
The probation office employee asked Shull what she would like to see happen at Lee’s sentencing.
“I told her, ‘Since I’m guessing that you won’t let me tie him up in a tree by his big toe and beat him with a spiked stick, then I’ll say that I’d just like to see him do time,’” Shull said.
Thursday, she got her wish when U.S. District Judge Michael Watson sentenced Lee, 31, of Lancaster, to five years in prison.
“I could not be happier,” Shull said afterward. “Now, I feel that our voices were heard and justice has been served.”
Shull was the first of four women whom Lee coerced into sex acts after stopping them for traffic violations.
Lee pleaded guilty in October to four counts of violation of civil rights by a law officer, each punishable by up to a year in prison, and to cyberstalking, which has a maximum penalty of five years.
According to court documents, Lee, who was a trooper from January 2006 until he resigned while under investigation in October 2013, admitted that he violated the civil rights of four female victims by coercing them in his official capacity to commit sexual acts, some of which he photographed, in exchange for his agreement not to file criminal charges or issue traffic infractions against the victims or their friends.
Lee further admitted that he engaged in sexual contact with certain victims while they were under arrest and restrained in handcuffs.
In one case, Lee confessed that he reached inside a handcuffed woman’s shirt two days after he groped Shull and took cellphone photos of his hand on the bare breasts of two other women in 2012 and 2013.
A message was left with Lee’s attorney.