A jury on Friday dismissed allegations by a sex worker that a former police chief and three other officers in Virginia protected a prostitution ring she said trafficked her.
An eight-person civil jury found that the woman, identified in court only as Jane Doe, was not a victim of trafficking, but a willing sex worker. Once the jury reached that conclusion, it did not have to consider the question of the officers’ alleged involvement in protecting the prostitution ring.
The woman said she was lured from the US during the two-week trial Costa Rica in 2010 with the promise of working as a nanny and housekeeper, and also as a high-end escort. She said she was told that she would not be required to have sex with customers, but could if she wanted to, and that she would be paid for it.
Instead, Doe said she was forced to engage in often humiliating sex acts with up to 17 men a day, and that Hazel Sanchez, the leader of the operation, punished her by confiscating her passport and threatening to harm her family. Was hired Distant.
But defense attorneys pointed to an email exchange between Doe and Sanchez before they arrived in the US, in which they discussed the rates the men would be charged on dates. Defense attorneys said the discussion of hourly rates was not consistent with Doe’s claim that she had been promised work as a high-class escort who would go on dates with wealthy clients if she chose. So only sex will do.
They also noted that Doe frequently traveled to Costa Rica between 2010 and 2015 – when she alleged she was trafficked – only to return to Sanchez each time. Doe said he did it because he feared for his family’s safety.
“She’s willing to ask to get whatever she wants in that moment,” Kim Baucom, an attorney for the two officers, said in her closing statement.
Prosecuting officers included former Fairfax County Police Chief Ed Riosselaar and James Baumstark, a retired captain in Fairfax County who now serves as a deputy chief in Asheville, North Carolina.
Both Roesler and Baumstark denied that they had ever used sex workers in Sanchez’s operation or that they had done anything to protect it.
Two other former officers, Michael Barbazett and Jason Murdoch, admitted they were Sanchez’s clients and resigned from the force after receiving his phone number. But he denied that he knew Doe, that he was a client of Doe’s, or that he was involved in any conduct to protect the prostitution ring.
Doe filed a lawsuit in 2021 against unnamed Fairfax County police officers. The trial followed a criminal case against Sanchez in which she was convicted of running a prostitution racket and sentenced to more than 2 years in prison.
some sex workers told FBI During his investigation of Sanchez, law enforcement officials were clients of his Virginia-based operation and provided security for Sanchez when police were conducting sting operations in the area.
Authorities searched through 10,000 names and numbers in Sanchez’s contact list and found Barbazett’s and Mardoko’s numbers.
When Doe’s attorney, Vic Glasberg, learned their names, he added them as defendants in the lawsuit. He also added Roessler and Baumstark as defendants when a former sex-trafficking detective in Fairfax County, William Wolfe, reached out to Glasberg alleging that Roessler and Baumstark had tried to interfere with his work.
The initial allegations against Rösler and Baumstark never suggested that they were clients of a prostitution ring. But last week, as the trial began, Doe and his attorney publicly alleged for the first time that they were.
Doe and another sex worker in Sanchez’s circle testified at the trial that they had been trafficked, and both identified all four officers in court as clients. But cross-examination revealed several discrepancies, including confusion about the names of the officers and the characteristics of their identities. Defense attorneys also raised doubts about how the women could identify these officers as customers during Sanchez’s prosecution, when they were unable to do so.
Doe filed suit under federal law, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act; That law required Doe to establish that she was smuggled in order to claim any damages. Once the jury concluded that she had voluntarily performed the sex work, the charge against the officer became a moot point.
lawyers Officials declined to comment after Friday’s decision.