A Texas woman has been charged with three counts of compelling prostitution and three counts for trafficking a child. Court documents say she pimped a 16-year-old girl by posting advertisements for escort services on Backpage.com.
Nancy Cisneros is accused of luring “Johns” to prostitute the teenager and getting hotels so she could pimp the young girl, according to KXAN in Austin. Court documents state the crimes go back to late June 2015.
The 43-year-old woman from San Marcus, Texas has been charged in Hays County.
KXAN reports that the young teenage victim told investigators she met the woman through a friend. Cisneros handed her contact information over to Bernell Quillens. Quillens contacted the girl and sent a photograph of money in a hotel room. He asked her if she wanted him to pick her up so she could “get started making money.”
Quillens and another man, Cameron White, would drive her to a hotel room in San Marcus, she said. They took photographs of her and posted them on the Backpage.com online escort advertising service. The money the young victim made by having sex with men was given directly to Quillens.
Compelling prostitution is a felony of the first degree if the person pimped is younger than 18 years at the time of the prostitution. Alleging that one did not know the age of the child is not a defense. The Texas Penal Code provides that the crime is a felony of the first degree “regardless of whether the actor knows the age of the person at the time the actor commits the offense.”
On October 6, Breitbart Texas reported that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made the highest-profile human trafficking bust in the Lone Star State’s history when the Backpage.com CEO was arrested at a Houston airport. Carl Ferrer was returning to Dallas, Texas after being in Amsterdam. At the time of the arrest, Attorney General Paxton called the website a “deep-seated evil” and “modern-day slavery.”
Backpage is considered the largest advertiser of adult escort services in North America. Backpage.com is a Dutch-owned limited liability corporation (LLC), incorporated in Delaware with its principal place of business in Dallas. It operates a worldwide online classified ad site on which people can post or locate an adult escort advertisement, among other things. An affidavit for a search warrant stated, “It is currently the single largest purveyor of Internet sex ads in the United States, and Backpage.com’s profits from this line of business register in the millions yearly.”
General Paxton told the media gathered at a press conference on the afternoon of Ferrer’s arrest that the victims that are sex trafficked include both voluntary and involuntary participants.
Texas Attorney General Paxton and California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris worked together on a lengthy investigation and found evidence that adult and child sex trafficking victims were forced into prostitution. Backpage.com allegedly did so thorough escort ads on its website.
“Making money off the backs of innocent human beings by allowing them to be exploited for modern-day slavery is not acceptable in Texas,” Attorney General Paxton said at the time of the arrest. “I intend to use every resource my office has to make sure those who profit from the exploitation and trafficking of persons are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
After Cisneros was arrested on compelling prostitution and trafficking of a child charges, General Paxton tweeted out a news report about the arrest and this message:
Another minor victim trafficked on https://t.co/s6YLx9r3ss. I’ll continue to fight to get this shut down. #humantrafficking https://t.co/HeMhw4JpWT
— Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 13, 2016
The CEO of Backpage.com faces money laundering charges in Texas and pimping charges in California. Breitbart Texas reported on October 9 that the Backpage.com CEO agreed to immediate extradition to California after his arrest in Houston. Carl Ferrer is now in a California jail.
Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.