BOSTON (AP) – Three Massachusetts residents have been arrested and charged with driving a 13-year-old girl around New England to engage in prostitution.
The defendants, charged in a federal indictment unsealed on Monday, allegedly transported the girl to Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire to engage in prostitution between October 2000 and September 2002 when she was 13 and 14 years old.
Robert Williams, 47, of Winthrop; Dawn Young, who also goes by the name Dawn Rossi, 39, of Revere; and Brooke Denman, 28, of Lynn, were each charged with one count of conspiring to transport an individual in interstate commerce to engage in prostitution, one count of conspiring to transport a minor in interstate commerce to engage in prostitution, and one count of sex trafficking of children. They also face other charges.
They also allegedly took some or all of the girl’s earnings from prostitution and helped her get false identification documents, according to the indictment.
They knew the girl was underage because Williams showed Young a poster of the girl distributed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that included her birth date, according to the indictment. Williams and Young even arranged for Denman to drive the girl to New Hampshire to call the center to say that she was safe, prosecutors said.
Williams was arrested in Indiana on Friday.
Young and Denman were arrested on Monday and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith Dein. Denman was released on $10,000 bond, while Young remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.
If convicted, the defendants face a maximum of five years in prison on the conspiracy charges; a maximum of 20 years on the child sex trafficking charges; a maximum of 10 years on the charges of inducing a minor to travel to engage in prostitution; a maximum of 15 years on the charges of transporting a minor to engage in prostitution; and a maximum of 10 years on the charges of transporting an individual to engage in prostitution.
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