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Sunday, August 14, 2016
Friday, September 3, 2010
IndyStar.com | Indianapolis news, community, business, sports, yellow pages and classifieds. Serving Central Indiana.
18-year-old woman was abducted to pay off man's drug debt, forced into prostitution, IMPD says
When an Indianapolis man couldn't pay his crack cocaine debt, police say, the dealer found another way to get the hundreds of dollars he was owed -- and then some.
The dealer, police say, abducted the 18-year-old daughter of the man's girlfriend and forced her into prostitution, keeping her in small Eastside motel rooms for weeks while selling her on the Internet to a string of "Johns."
The suspected drug dealer, Chris Smiley, 27, has been arrested, along with two people police describe as accomplices. Police say Smiley regularly beat and threatened the young woman, whom he forced to work in a Westside strip club before keeping her confined in motels.
Police are calling it one of the first cases of human trafficking in Marion County.
"These people are modern-day slave traders," said Prosecutor Carl Brizzi. "They took her captive and traded on her flesh and innocence for her parent's drug debt."
Smiley, Ayannah Willis, 26, and Lotoya Harlin, 21, were charged with several crimes, including promotion of human trafficking, criminal confinement, promoting prostitution, battery and intimidation.
The woman told police her ordeal began in the middle of February and lasted until mid-March. Police say her mother's boyfriend owed Smiley $500 for crack, so Willis told her she would have to be held hostage to pay off the debt. It's not clear, however, whether her mom and her mom's boyfriend knew she had been abducted.
Police and prosecutors are not naming the woman and use only her initials, B.A., in the charging document.
The woman told police she was taken to a Westside apartment where she was threatened and forced to work as a stripper at the Wild Cheri Show Club, 4884 Crawfordsville Road. She said Smiley hung out at the back door and collected the money she made after each dance.
About a week later, she said, the club owner told her and Harlin they could no longer work there because she had a black eye.
The woman said she tried to escape from the apartment once and that both female suspects captured her at the bottom of the steps. She said Smiley hit her on the side of the head with the butt of a .45-caliber handgun and threatened to kill her.
After she lost her job at the club, she, the two alleged accomplices and another girl -- a juvenile whose age was not contained in police documents -- moved to the Always Inn Motel, 7410 E. 21st St., according to police. Smiley referred to the group as "Team Smiley," the girl told police.The group took out ads online on Craigslist and LiveLinks, offering sex for money.
"Several men a day e-mailed back and came to the motel for sex" for $100, said Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Vice Investigator Laura Smith.
The team moved to two other motels -- Econolodge, 3525 N. Shadeland Ave., and Motel 6, 2851 N. Shadeland Ave. -- in the subsequent two weeks and continued the operation there.
Detectives received a call from the younger girl on March 19. She told police she had been raped.
When detectives went to the Motel 6, she and the 18-year-old were there, along with Willis and Harlin.
As the younger teenager began telling her story, detectives determined that she had not been raped by the clients visiting the motel, as she claimed, but had willingly been prostituting herself.
They also learned the 18-year-old's role in the operation might not be consensual, Smith said.
The questioning effectively broke up the operation. For the next five months, detectives interviewed the woman, who is now 19, and worked to verify her version of events. They subpoenaed telephone and e-mail records of the suspects and clients, obtained copies of the classified ads and seized motel records.
Smith said the motels had saved copies of the driver's licenses of the people who paid the bills.
"They were very helpful," she said.
On Aug. 11, Smiley, Willis and Harlin turned themselves in to police. Each is being held in the Marion County Jail on $100,000 bond, and they are set to appear in court Sept. 27.
Smith said gaining the cooperation of the shell-shocked 18-year-old was the most difficult part of the investigation. The woman was homeless and didn't trust anyone, Smith said.
"She doesn't trust me, she doesn't trust anyone. Everyone she has ever trusted has turned on her," Smith said.
Call Star reporter John Tuohy at (317) 444-6303.
IndyStar.com | Indianapolis news, community, business, sports, yellow pages and classifieds. Serving Central Indiana.
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