They were pursuing their modeling dreams, but wound up in a horrific nightmare — drugged and raped, their sexual assaults caught on video and then posted on Internet sex sites around the world and sold in porn shops.
Some of the women woke up in their cars or hotels, bleeding or covered in vomit, drugged and unable to move, remembering only snippets of being sexually abused by a strange man.
Others had no memory of the assaults and only began to piece together what happened when strangers, who tracked them down using ID cards and other information on the videos, phoned or sent them messages on Facebook claiming to be fans of their "performances."
On Thursday, several of the victims confronted Lavont Flanders Jr. and Emerson Callum at their sentencing hearing in federal court in Miami.
A federal jury last year found the two men guilty of numerous counts, including enticing the women to South Florida, knowing that fraud would be used to make the women take part in commercial sex acts. Flanders was also convicted of five counts of distributing a date rape drug to the women.
Seven women testifed at the trial, but federal prosecutors said the investigation revealed a staggering number of offenses between 2006 and 2011.
About 50 women reported similar crimes by Flanders and Callum, prosecutors told the judge. Phone records showed they contacted 100 women in the year before federal agents arrested them in August.
Read more by clicking here...
No comments:
Post a Comment