'Sons of Guns' star Will Hayden convicted of rape

BATON ROUGE, La. — Former reality star of Discovery's "Sons of Guns" Will Hayden has been found guilty of two counts of aggravated rape and one count of forcible rape, the Daily Mail reports. The 51-year-old's victims, now 15 and 37 years old, both were present in a Baton Rogue, Louisiana, court for the jury's unanimous ruling.

According to the juvenile victim, Hayden raped her over the course of a year and a half, while she was just 11 and 12 years old. Hayden’s former employee walked into his house one day to find the two kissing and immediately filed a police report. The older victim shared a similar story, saying the reality star raped her on two occasions in the early 1990s when she was 12 and 13 years old.

“He didn’t listen. I was so scared,” she’s quoted as saying in court. “I didn’t want to go through this again. I remember feeling I must have done something wrong.”

Hayden denied all of the allegations in court Thursday when he testified. The prosecutor called him a “master manipulator” and said he had lied to the jury with a “pretty-well-rehearsed” performance. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in May, but the aggravated rape conviction carries a life sentence in prison.

He also faces a separate rape charge and a sex crime charge in Livingston Parish, concerning a 15-year-old girl and his daughter, Stephanie, and is scheduled for trial in July. In a 2014 “Dr. Phil” episode, Stephanie said her father came into her bedroom drunk and kissed her but that it never occurred again.

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Cox Media Group