A Rossville man with an extensive history of sex crimes has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of child molestation and public indecency in Catoosa County Superior Court.

After being tried by a jury on March 26 and 27, Harvey Lee Akin, 46, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, as well as an additional five-year term to be served consecutively with the life sentence, reports show.

Superior Court judge Jon B. Wood presided over the trial.

“Mr. Akin has a history of public indecency charges and had also previously been convicted of child molestation, which is why he was given a life sentence,” said Herbert “Buzz” Franklin, district attorney for the Lookout Moun-tain Judicial Circuit. “He also had three previous felony convictions, which made him eligible for a sentence to be served without the possibility of parole under Georgia law.”

Akin’s most recent arrest came on Nov. 15, 2011, when he was arrested for masturbating in front of a woman and her child while in his mother’s van in a grocery store parking lot in Fort Oglethorpe.

Akin was wearing an ankle monitor at the time, which confirmed him being at the incident location as the victim had claimed.

Records show Akin has been arrested for public indecency on multiple occasions, after being convicted of child molestation in June 1993.

“Mr. Akin has been a repeat offender and will now no longer be a threat to society,” Franklin said.