Area Juvenile Sex Rings Targeted Using Anti-Trafficking Laws

Shawn Moore, the federal public defender who represented Brice, said after the trial that use of the federal statutes could be seen as excessive, especially because Brice could have been tried in Superior Court only in connection with the younger prostitute and still would have faced hefty penalties.

"It's like using a hammer on an ant," Moore said. "Just because you have jurisdiction doesn't mean that you have to utilize it all the time."

Brice will be sentenced May 11. He did not take the stand during the trial, and his attorneys did not call witnesses.

The former prostitutes said they walked the streets all night, in all weather -- outside motels; downtown at 14th and K streets NW, once the city's premiere red-light district; and near Eastern and Minnesota avenues NE. They told of a private bar known as Clicks on the second floor of a building in the 1400 block of L Street NW, where sex acts took place behind a curtain in the VIP room. Wes Dimov, the proprietor, pleaded guilty Feb. 25 in a separate case to operating a bawdy house, a misdemeanor.

Brice took the 14-year-old to prostitute in New York and Atlantic City, the girl said at trial, and traveled with the 19-year-old to Miami, where they worked the South Beach strip.

The younger prostitute, a runaway, said she helped recruit the older teenager -- who had just graduated from high school in Southern Maryland -- during summer 2004. Several weeks later, the girl testified, Brice began showing the other prostitute more attention. He beat the girl when she complained.

"Why did you end up staying?" Marcus-Kurn asked gently, as the girl, now 16, sat in the witness chair and squeezed her pink ball.

"Because he said he loved me."

"And how did that make you feel?"

"Special."

Both teenagers have received support, including counseling, from agencies linked to the task force. They are off the streets and trying to restart their lives.

In her closing argument, Marcus-Kurn told the jury that the former prostitutes had not seen each other in more than a year and that they were rivals rather than friends. Yet their descriptions of life with Brice matched almost exactly, Marcus-Kurn said: the codelike language, Brice's tattoos and the promises he made but never kept.

"The defendant had no intention of loving or protecting them," the prosecutor said. "The only thing the defendant was interested in was the money and the life and the control.

"He was their daddy, and he liked that status."