Mom Held in Prostitution Case Involving Daughter

During a four-month period last year, a 16-year-old Annapolis girl found herself thrust into a life of prostitution, taking orders from a pimp who sold her body to men and collected cash and crack cocaine in return, police said yesterday.

The pimp, police said, was her mother.

Police alleged yesterday that the 34-year-old woman once made her daughter snort cocaine to "calm her down" after she objected to what she was asked to do. But mainly she used her authority as a parent to force her daughter to have sex with men, said Hal Dalton, an Annapolis police spokesman.

"She would say she would need the money for the family," Dalton said.

The mother, whose name was withheld by police to protect the identity of the daughter, was arrested Tuesday on charges including child abuse, sexual solicitation of a minor, prostitution and pandering. She was being held last night in lieu of $200,000 bond, police said.

Police accustomed to investigating disturbing crimes were taken aback by the daughter's allegations.

"Shocking that a mother would do that to her child, both mentally and physically, subjecting her to untold danger," Dalton said.

Police believe that the mother arranged for the girl to have sex as many as two dozen times between February and June 2007, at the family's townhouse or a neighboring unit at the Bloomsbury Square public-housing complex.

"The mother would actually just make the arrangements," Dalton said. "She would tell the daughter where and when to be."

Dalton said police were looking for two men who allegedly received sex from the girl. The girl told police that she believed her mother did not use the cocaine but sold it instead, Dalton said. On one occasion, when the girl was upset about being forced into prostitution, her mother "suggested she do a line of cocaine to settle her nerves," Dalton said.

"The girl didn't want to do that," he said. "The mother snorted a line of cocaine to show her."

The daughter obeyed her mother, but she continued to be disturbed by what she was doing, Dalton said. In June, he said, she turned to police. She now is staying with relatives.

"She just said she never was comfortable with it," Dalton said. "She just came to a point where she had enough."