Area Juvenile Sex Rings Targeted Using Anti-Trafficking Laws

Never speak to or look at another pimp.

Get the money in advance.

Obey your pimp's "bottom" -- the prostitute he trusts most. She and the other prostitutes who work for your pimp are your "sisters." All of you make up a "stable." Along with the pimp, you are a "family."

Similar language and hierarchies are used across the country by pimps who recruit and coerce girls and young women, said Lois Lee, a Los Angeles-based advocate who runs shelters for former prostitutes and testified as an expert witness for the prosecution. Sex traffickers focus on emotionally troubled targets, she said, such as girls who have been sexually abused.

"They love their pimp, and they believe their pimp, and they believe that if they keep doing this, eventually the pimp will buy them a home and he'll have a baby with them -- what everybody wants," she testified.

Prosecutors said runaways and other vulnerable girls make up a significant portion of the District's prostitute population. Authorities said that about 30 prostitutes who are known to be juveniles are arrested each year for soliciting in the District, but they added that many more prostitutes who are arrested lie about their ages or have false IDs that say they are at least 18.

Brice was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Marcus-Kurn and Justice Department trial attorney Myesha Braden, in cooperation with the myriad law-enforcement agencies and social service and advocacy groups that are part of the D.C. task force and Innocence Lost. The groups share information and forge strategies for building cases against violent pimps, with the nonprofit organizations helping find and draw out traumatized, often wary prostitutes whose testimony is crucial but who might still be seeking their pimps' affection and approval.

Advocates helped reassure the teenagers who testified against Brice, who looked on from the gallery in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer. They ensured the girls had tissues and pink rubber balls -- decorated with smiley faces -- they could squeeze to relieve stress.

"The more you work with this population, the better you get at learning how to reach them, and how to help them get away from the man who's been abusing them," Marcus-Kurn said. "It's like a cult. We as a community . . . are called upon to try and hear what the victim is not saying or cannot say or is told not to say."

Those who defend alleged pimps often argue that the women were not forced to prostitute -- but that strategy applies only when the prostitutes are 18 or older. Trafficking of a minor, even without coercion, is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 40 years. Defendants charged with pandering -- essentially managing adult prostitutes without coercion -- face far less serious penalties; for example, Dontae Reed, who pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court in January to running a two-prostitute ring, was sentenced Thursday to 36 months in prison.

In Brice's case, the jury of eight women and four men found him not guilty of coercing a 19-year-old prostitute, apparently rejecting testimony that he beat and threatened her. But the jury, after deliberating for three hours, declared Brice guilty of trafficking and sexually abusing the 14-year-old.

Marcus-Kurn said testimony from the older prostitute bolstered the charges involving the girl. Bringing the case in federal court, she said, also allowed the government to charge Brice with transporting the minor and the adult teenager across state lines for prostitution, charges for which he was found guilty.