PHOTO: A 14-year-old girl was forced to perform sex acts for money in this Jamaica home. Photo Courtesy of Google
By Forum Staff
Lindsay Archibald, 33, of Woodside, and Stephen Garrison, 27, of Jamaica, have been sentenced to prison for their roles in forcing a 14-year-old girl into prostitution in 2013.
“The defendants in this case preyed on a vulnerable teenage girl. They used this child as if she was a commodity to be sold to others for cash – money that they pocketed for themselves. Sex trafficking is a serious and very disturbing crime that my office continues to vigorously pursue and successfully prosecute,” saidQueens District Attorney Richard Brown.
Archibald pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and was sentenced to three to nine years in prison. Garrison also pleaded guilty last month to second-degree promoting prostitution and was sentenced this week to three to six years in prison. A third co-defendant, Quanesha Hunte, 25, of Far Rockaway, Queens, pleaded guilty to second-degree promoting prostitution last month and was sentenced to time served after being held on Rikers Island for more than a year. Archibald’s guilty plea was the office’s twenty-first sex trafficking conviction since the legislation strengthened the penalties for human trafficking that took effect on November 1, 2007.
According to the charges in this case, a 14-year-old female victim ran away from her home in September 2013 and a short time later was introduced to the defendants, who told her she had to choose which pimp she was going to work for as a prostitute. When the victim refused to choose, the three defendants allegedly threatened her and claimed that she now owed them a large sum of money and would have to pay them back by performing sex acts for money inside of a residence in Queens. Between November 1, 2013 and February 3, 2014, the victim was kept inside a residence on 107th Avenue against her will by Archibald and Hunte and forced to have sexual intercourse with numerous men in exchange for cash, which she had to turn over to Archibald and Hunte. Allegedly, when the victim told her captors she wanted to leave, they beat her, and on one occasion, Archibald specifically told the victim, “If you ever try to leave, I’ll find you and kill you.” Twice between December 2013 and January 2014, Archibald forced her to have sexual intercourse and oral sex with Garrison to test performance, and Garrison forced himself on her.
On February 3, 2014, the victim had a chance to use a phone and called her grandmother and 911 for help. She told her grandmother that she was being held against her will and that she had seen a gun where she was being kept.
When police arrived at Hunte’s residence in response to the 911 call, they observed the victim run out of the location crying and upset. Inside, they observed a Glock handgun sitting inside an open drawer and Hunte and Garrison on the premises. Shortly thereafter, Archibald arrived outside the location. The next day, police executed a court-authorized search warrant and recovered the .45 caliber black Glock 21 handgun, which was loaded with a magazine containing approximately eight rounds of ammunition.
