St. Louis – from www.stltoday.com – Two women who were brought to St. Louis and forced into prostitution were rescued by a strip club customer, an FBI agent said Monday.
The women, referred to only as “Jane Doe 1 and 2” in court and court documents, were being rented out against their will to men who responded to online ads on Craigslist and backpage.com, court documents and testimony show. They were forced into the business by Terrence A. Yarbrough, FBI Special Agent Cynthia Dockery wrote in a court affidavit unsealed Monday.
Yarbrough, 34, now faces a federal charge of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted.
According to Dockery’s affidavit and her testimony in a preliminary court hearing Monday, the women were forced into prostitution this way:
Jane Doe 1 met Yarbrough in Memphis, Tenn., when she helped Yarbrough’s friend move. After the move, she asked to be taken home, but Yarbrough refused. The next morning, he said she could go with “he and his girls,” meaning Jane Doe 1’s friend and another woman, or be taken to the “middle of nowhere” and abandoned.
Yarbrough and the women then went to a Super 8 motel in Chesapeake, Va., near Norfolk.
Dockery said she had been told Jane Doe 1 was a whore and belonged to Yarbrough. He refused to let Jane Doe 1 leave, and his friends told her she would be hurt if she tried to leave.
One woman even had Yarbrough’s nickname, “T Rex” tattooed on her back. Both were in court Monday, along with Yarbrough’s grandmother and a cousin. Neither friend has been charged in federal court.
Yarbrough also made contact with Jane Doe 2, whom he had met the month before. Yarbrough said that he had modeling contracts and could get Jane Doe 2 started in the business if she had $5,000. She came up with about $3,000, but instead of finding herself in modeling school, she found herself in the same situation as Jane Doe1. When she balked at becoming a prostitute, Yarbrough slapped her, and his friends said that she should do what she was told, as “two girls had already turned up dead,” Dockery said.
Jane Doe 2 was eventually taken to C-Mowe’s strip club in Washington Park, Ill., but she told her story to a customer and he rescued her before her first shift had ended. She called police after leaving the club. Jane Doe 1 was taken to another Metro East strip club, and was rescued by police.
Yarbrough was arrested by St. Louis police Aug. 24 at a downtown hotel, where he had been staying with the women.
Dockery said that Yarbrough told her that he cut grass for his brother’s company for a living and that strippers paid him to take them to clubs.
Yarbrough is in jail awaiting a judge’s decision on whether he will be released on bond. He also told U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry Adelman Monday that he needed more time to contact witnesses on his behalf.