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Washington DC and other places follies

Guilty plea in trafficking of high school girls in hotels
By Barbara De Lollis, USA TODAY

Just miles away from the nation's capitol, two Crips gang associates pleaded guilty to charges of running a prostitution ring that pimped out local high school girls, selling them for sex in hotels and apartment units, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The Post tells us that at least 10 underage girls from Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia were lured into prostitution.
They entered their guilty plea in federal court in Alexandria, Va. The gang members came from Crips chapter based in Fairfax County, Va., in suburban Washington.
None of the hotels are identified in the article.
Also, no hotel was singled out and thanked for providing authorities with information that helped spark the investigation, as is sometimes the case.
This time, authorities built the case after a girl told a school staff member and another girl told her parents, the Post says.
Michael Tavon Jeffries, 21, of Woodbridge, Va., and Christopher Sylvia, 23, of Springfield, Va., pleaded guilty to their roles in federal court in Alexandria, the Post says.
The girls were forced to keep working by use of threats and violence, including rape, the newspaper says, citing court records.
Jeffries admitted that his role for the ring included advertising the underage girls on Backpage.com and paying for hotel rooms. Sylvia admitted to transporting the girls to jobs, the story says.


A quick check on the Internet reveals another Thursday story about a different case - this time in West Texas.
The West Texas CBS affiliate says authorities arrested a 25-year-old man in Odessa on charges that include sexual assault of a child, compelling prostitution by force/threat and online solicitation of a minor.
The charges stem from his involvement with a 14-year-old girl he'd "brought from Houston to Amarillo and then to Odessa for sex," the story says. The girl - who was said to have been brought to a hotel room with other girls - had been advertised on Backpage.com as a 17-year-old, the CBS report says.
Alexandria, Va., ring used social media
What makes the Alexandria, Va., case stand out, however, is the heavy reliance on social media by gang members to attract girls, the Post notes.

The ring partly relied on a fake Facebook profile - for a woman named "Rain Smith" - to attempt to recruit girls, says the article, which cites court records.

"We have a zero-tolerance, one-strike policy toward juvenile sex trafficking in this district," U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said in a statement. "Anyone we find who entices or forces a young girl into the vile world of prostitution will pay a very heavy price for their actions."

The two men could be sentenced from 10 years to life in prison.

See the Washington Post article linked above for details or the Post's March 29 story, which discusses charges against a total of five men for running the same ring. The ring is believed to have operated for as long as five years.

Fairfax County police investigated the case with the FBI and the Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force, the Post says.