When you hear the words “pimp” and “prostitute” you don’t always associate it with “human trafficking”. Sometimes they are two (or three) of a kind.
Orange County Sheriff’s deputies arrested a man this past Sunday on charges of human trafficking. It all started when a deputy saw a woman getting out of the back of a car with two men in the front seats. All of this occurred on Orange Blossom Trail.
The deputy, sensing something suspicious, began chatting with the young woman, who lied about her name before admitting the truth to the deputy. She seemed “afraid and timid” according to deputies.
The deputy informed the girl that the sheriff’s office could help her, but that they needed to know what was going on. That’s when a bombshell dropped.
She explained to them how she left Atlanta after a friend suggested the idea of becoming a hooker in Miami, and how she was then lured from Miami to Orlando by a pimp. When they met he immediately forced her into prostitution with physical threats, and all the money made from sex acts went directly to him without her even seeing a penny.
There was a driver involved besides the pimp, but he remains a mystery. The pimp in question has been identified, but not caught. Since he is believed to be transporting, soliciting, recruiting, harboring, providing, enticing, maintaining, or obtaining another person for the sole purpose of exploitation of that person, he would be charged with human trafficking.
This is even more serious than if he had just been busted for being a pimp. This digs deep since if he’s caught and convicted he could be looking at 15 to 30 years in prison. Of course besides the human trafficking charge, he will be charged with procure for prostitution because he accepted money he knew to be, or believed to be, the earnings of a person engaged in prostitution.
Human trafficking is considered the modern day version of slavery. A defense attorney‘s job might never be more challenging than this.
