Couple sentenced to prison for trafficking prostitutes from their home

OGDEN, Utah (KSL) — An Ogden couple has been sentenced to prison for trafficking women into prostitution by beating them, intimidating them or exploiting their drug addiction.

Lynnsie Reddish, 21, and Terrance Chavez Jones, 31, were sentenced Monday to two concurrent sentences of at least one and up to 15 years in prison, according to KSL.com. They pleaded guilty last month to two counts apiece of human trafficking, a second-degree felony.

In a memorandum filed prior to the sentencing, prosecutors asked for prison time for Reddish and Jones, detailing the allegations the couple targeted seven vulnerable women — who had experienced homelessness, sexual abuse, poverty or drug addiction — for the prostitution operation they ran out of their home.

According to prosecutors, Reddish was responsible for befriending the women, leaving them feeling indebted for drugs and favors, while Jones acted as “the muscle” to keep them working in the commercial sex operation even as the couple kept most or all of the money the women were paid for their “dates.”

Reddish and Jones admitted providing heroin to one woman, who was addicted, so long as she kept working for them and giving them the money she made, according to court documents. When the couple thought the woman was going to leave their operation, they both beat her and Reddish cut off her hair with scissors, court documents state.

Reddish and Jones agreed to pay $350 in restitution to help pay for the woman’s medical bills, according to the agreement.

Reddish also admitted to recruiting a woman into the operation knowing she had a mental disability, then using that disability and the woman’s drug addiction to keep her meeting clients whom Reddish arranged meetings with through online advertisements.

Jones admitted to providing drugs to a third woman in the operation, according to court documents, and when the woman threatened to leave, “I chased her down and beat her up in the street outside of the house,” Jones said in plea documents.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office originally charged the couple with 19 felonies apiece, including aggravated kidnapping, engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity, human trafficking, aggravated exploitation of a prostitute, money laundering and aggravated assault.

The additional charges were dropped in exchange for the couple’s guilty pleas.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.