Crime
Mike De Sisti
Roy Kennard Weatherall, 45, is escorted into a courtroom at the Milwaukee County Courthouse on Thursday. He’s on trial on charges that he pimped, sexually assaulted and beat a girl and solicited others for prostitution.
Milwaukee police detective Dawn Jones explained how girls are branded, literally, through tattoos, as property of one pimp or another
enlarge photo
Mike De Sisti
Roy Kennard
Weatherall, 45, talks to his attorney, James Goldmann, before court
resumes Thursday. Weatherall is on trial for allegedly pimping, sexually
assaulting and beating up a teen girl, soliciting others for
prostitution and trying to intimidate witnesses.
|
| Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department |
Roy Weatherall
The
young woman alternatively sobbed with longing and flared in anger as she
testified about the man prosecutors say recruited her into prostitution
when she was 15.
Roy Kennard Weatherall, 45, is on trial in Milwaukee for allegedly pimping, sexually assaulting and beating up the girl, soliciting others for prostitution and trying to intimidate witnesses not to testify against him — 14 counts in all. He says the girl was already prostituting before he met her, had already worked for a different man, and that she voluntarily gave him her earnings to help cover their living expenses.
If convicted, he would join a growing list of Milwaukee men who have drawn vulnerable young teens into the underworld life of prostitution, where they work long, dangerous hours and invest their total earnings and emotions with men they call "daddy."
Weatherall's main victim, named "SDD" in court documents, had come to authorities' attention in July 2013 when she was stopped by FBI agents during Operation Cross Country, an ongoing effort to identify and rescue minors caught in sex trafficking operations. It's a crime with disturbingly deep roots in Milwaukee. Several area men have been convicted of trafficking young girls and been sentenced to decades in prison. A Boys & Girls Club staffer who tries to inform youth about the dangers of traffickers, said the city is known as "the Harvard of sex trafficking." In the 2013 sweep, 10 children were rescued in Wisconsin, second only to 12 in San Francisco, according to the FBI.
Though she first denied she was reporting to any pimp, in September SDD gave her true story to the FBI and Milwaukee police. The opening came after Weatherall beat her during a car trip back to Milwaukee from a strip club dancing job in Wisconsin Rapids, she said.
SDD, now 18, ignored a subpoena earlier in the week and was arrested as a material witness. An attorney appointed for her said SDD would refuse to testify without immunity for any illegal activity she might describe.
By Wednesday afternoon, she finally took the witness stand. She said she never made it to high school. She said she met Weatherall in 2011 and "he seemed nice."
She had told investigators she began having sex with him late in 2011, while she was still 15, and she believed he was in his 20s. On the witness stand, however, SDD said she couldn't remember when it happened. "I can't remember the first time. I'm a prostitute. I've had sex with lots of men." She testified she had started prostituting at 13, under the control of a different pimp.
SDD said she moved into Weatherall's house on N. 16th St. and they got a dog for Christmas, and eventually she began dancing at strip clubs in northern Wisconsin for Weatherall.
She denied he made her do prostitution. She said she did that on her own but admitted she gave all the money she made to him "because I thought I was being taken care of."
Asked by the prosecutor if she still kind of liked Weatherall, SDD replied, "I love him."
Yet she also described how he beat her regularly and once made her ride naked in the back seat of a car from Wisconsin Dells to Milwaukee with the windows down, after a fight related to her dancing at a club. Back home, he beat her, using a metal pole that broke her elbow.
"He beat me senseless. I was blacking out," she told jurors.
"I looked like the 'Elephant Woman.' My face was broken," she sobbed. "Everything was broken."
That prompted her to leave for Florida, she said. But the prostitution business was "too busy" in Orlando and SDD returned to Milwaukee, and to Weatherall. She denied that his numerous Facebook pleadings for her to come back was a factor.
Donna Sabella, a mental health nurse and professor at Drexel University, and an editor of the Journal of Human Trafficking, said the lives of young victims are much like domestic violence relationships, in which the victim loves the person who is abusing them, whether a spouse, parent or friend.
She noted for that for girls in prostitution, the trauma is worse the earlier they get involved, and often results in arrested development — young women with the social or emotional age of someone 12 or 13, someone who was lacking support in another environment.
"Somebody loves them for a minute," Sabella said of why girls fall in with pimps. "It has nothing to do with sex. Some really are looking for a father. The irony is they get the opposite of what they wanted."
Sabella supports the increased prosecution and awareness of trafficking, yet notes that at the same time it has become somewhat normalized through some music, pimp costumes and shows like "Pimp My Ride."
After hearing a description of SDD's testimony, Sabella called it a fairly common response among girls who have been trafficked. "What's going to happen to her now? That's as big an issue," Sabella said.
SDD was released from custody after her testimony Thursday.
Milwaukee police detective Dawn Jones testified she has investigated dozens of sex trafficking cases and spoken with hundreds of victims. Sixteen jurors listened intently as Jones laid out the culture, rules and lifestyle associated with "the game," and tried to explain why so many girls become part of it.
Jones explained how girls are branded, literally, through tattoos, as property of one pimp or another, and how they can "choose up" and work for a second pimp by looking one in the eye. Severe beatings and transfer payments may accompany the process.
Jones said successful pimps exercise such control over their "stable" that girls without other support find it hard to even imagine fending for themselves and will see working for a different pimp as their only escape. But sometimes, Jones said, the girls, or their families, do finally turn to law enforcement.
In Milwaukee, that cooperation has led to the conviction of several men for sex trafficking, and some very long federal sentences.
Weatherall was charged with soliciting a different 15-year-old girl for prostitution in 2005, after she was arrested in a sting. He wound up pleading to a charge of causing mental harm to a child but was later allowed to withdraw the plea. The Court of Appeals found there was an inadequate factual basis for the plea, because Weatherall denied encouraging the girl to engage in prostitution.
The charge was ultimately dismissed when prosecutors could not find the victim after the appellate ruling.
Weatherall's current trial is expected to last into next week. Other women who prosecutors contend he either pimped or tried to pimp are expected to testify.
Crime, courts and legal issues in Milwaukee and throughout Wisconsin
Roy Kennard Weatherall, 45, is on trial in Milwaukee for allegedly pimping, sexually assaulting and beating up the girl, soliciting others for prostitution and trying to intimidate witnesses not to testify against him — 14 counts in all. He says the girl was already prostituting before he met her, had already worked for a different man, and that she voluntarily gave him her earnings to help cover their living expenses.
If convicted, he would join a growing list of Milwaukee men who have drawn vulnerable young teens into the underworld life of prostitution, where they work long, dangerous hours and invest their total earnings and emotions with men they call "daddy."
Weatherall's main victim, named "SDD" in court documents, had come to authorities' attention in July 2013 when she was stopped by FBI agents during Operation Cross Country, an ongoing effort to identify and rescue minors caught in sex trafficking operations. It's a crime with disturbingly deep roots in Milwaukee. Several area men have been convicted of trafficking young girls and been sentenced to decades in prison. A Boys & Girls Club staffer who tries to inform youth about the dangers of traffickers, said the city is known as "the Harvard of sex trafficking." In the 2013 sweep, 10 children were rescued in Wisconsin, second only to 12 in San Francisco, according to the FBI.
Though she first denied she was reporting to any pimp, in September SDD gave her true story to the FBI and Milwaukee police. The opening came after Weatherall beat her during a car trip back to Milwaukee from a strip club dancing job in Wisconsin Rapids, she said.
SDD, now 18, ignored a subpoena earlier in the week and was arrested as a material witness. An attorney appointed for her said SDD would refuse to testify without immunity for any illegal activity she might describe.
By Wednesday afternoon, she finally took the witness stand. She said she never made it to high school. She said she met Weatherall in 2011 and "he seemed nice."
She had told investigators she began having sex with him late in 2011, while she was still 15, and she believed he was in his 20s. On the witness stand, however, SDD said she couldn't remember when it happened. "I can't remember the first time. I'm a prostitute. I've had sex with lots of men." She testified she had started prostituting at 13, under the control of a different pimp.
SDD said she moved into Weatherall's house on N. 16th St. and they got a dog for Christmas, and eventually she began dancing at strip clubs in northern Wisconsin for Weatherall.
She denied he made her do prostitution. She said she did that on her own but admitted she gave all the money she made to him "because I thought I was being taken care of."
Asked by the prosecutor if she still kind of liked Weatherall, SDD replied, "I love him."
Yet she also described how he beat her regularly and once made her ride naked in the back seat of a car from Wisconsin Dells to Milwaukee with the windows down, after a fight related to her dancing at a club. Back home, he beat her, using a metal pole that broke her elbow.
"He beat me senseless. I was blacking out," she told jurors.
"I looked like the 'Elephant Woman.' My face was broken," she sobbed. "Everything was broken."
That prompted her to leave for Florida, she said. But the prostitution business was "too busy" in Orlando and SDD returned to Milwaukee, and to Weatherall. She denied that his numerous Facebook pleadings for her to come back was a factor.
Looking for a father
During testimony Thursday, SDD repeated that Weatherall never made her work as a prostitute, or forced her to give him all her earnings or made her recruit other girls. She tried to say she couldn't remember things she told the FBI, but would then admit she was being truthful when she made the earlier statements. She said that though she went to her mother when she last left Weatherall, she's chosen to be homeless since his arrest, rather than stay with her mother.Donna Sabella, a mental health nurse and professor at Drexel University, and an editor of the Journal of Human Trafficking, said the lives of young victims are much like domestic violence relationships, in which the victim loves the person who is abusing them, whether a spouse, parent or friend.
She noted for that for girls in prostitution, the trauma is worse the earlier they get involved, and often results in arrested development — young women with the social or emotional age of someone 12 or 13, someone who was lacking support in another environment.
"Somebody loves them for a minute," Sabella said of why girls fall in with pimps. "It has nothing to do with sex. Some really are looking for a father. The irony is they get the opposite of what they wanted."
Sabella supports the increased prosecution and awareness of trafficking, yet notes that at the same time it has become somewhat normalized through some music, pimp costumes and shows like "Pimp My Ride."
After hearing a description of SDD's testimony, Sabella called it a fairly common response among girls who have been trafficked. "What's going to happen to her now? That's as big an issue," Sabella said.
SDD was released from custody after her testimony Thursday.
Milwaukee police detective Dawn Jones testified she has investigated dozens of sex trafficking cases and spoken with hundreds of victims. Sixteen jurors listened intently as Jones laid out the culture, rules and lifestyle associated with "the game," and tried to explain why so many girls become part of it.
Jones explained how girls are branded, literally, through tattoos, as property of one pimp or another, and how they can "choose up" and work for a second pimp by looking one in the eye. Severe beatings and transfer payments may accompany the process.
Jones said successful pimps exercise such control over their "stable" that girls without other support find it hard to even imagine fending for themselves and will see working for a different pimp as their only escape. But sometimes, Jones said, the girls, or their families, do finally turn to law enforcement.
In Milwaukee, that cooperation has led to the conviction of several men for sex trafficking, and some very long federal sentences.
Weatherall was charged with soliciting a different 15-year-old girl for prostitution in 2005, after she was arrested in a sting. He wound up pleading to a charge of causing mental harm to a child but was later allowed to withdraw the plea. The Court of Appeals found there was an inadequate factual basis for the plea, because Weatherall denied encouraging the girl to engage in prostitution.
The charge was ultimately dismissed when prosecutors could not find the victim after the appellate ruling.
Weatherall's current trial is expected to last into next week. Other women who prosecutors contend he either pimped or tried to pimp are expected to testify.
Proof and Hearsay Blog
Crime, courts and legal issues in Milwaukee and throughout WisconsinAbout Bruce Vielmetti
Bruce Vielmetti writes about legal affairs.
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