Slave Next Door (18 page)

charges, including placing juveniles in prostitution and compelling

adults into prostitution through force, fraud, or coercion: in other

words, sex trafficking. In making its case, the government, represented

by assistant U.S. attorney James Genco and the new federal Human

Trafficking Prosecution Unit’s special litigation counsel, Andrew J.

Kline, described Paris’s brutal treatment of his “girls”: the handcuffs,

humiliation, beatings, rapes, death threats, denial of money.

While driving to Connecticut that morning, and having already read

the indictments against him, we had formed a mental picture of Dennis

Paris as a monster. We arrived at the courtroom a little early, and most

of the players had not yet taken their seats. At the table in front of us

stood a thin, pale, white-haired man who looked to be in his sixties,

dressed in a grey suit; next to him sat a very fat, friendly black man in

his mid-thirties with close-cropped, thinning hair, dressed in a conser-

vative blue shirt and striped tie. He asked if we were reporters for the

Hartford Courant,
at which point we gave our names, as did he—Dennis

Paris. He was not what we’d expected.

Hearing a bit of our exchange, the older man—who turned out to be

Paris’s attorney, Jeremiah Donovan—asked what we were writing about.

“Trafficking,” we responded.

With a knowing, somewhat condescending smile, he replied, “Well,

this isn’t about trafficking. This is about man’s oldest profession. When

I think of trafficking, I think of buying and selling babies in Bangkok!”

It was an interesting comment, especially considering that Donovan

had, in fact, been a prosecutor before going over to the private sector

and that he presumably knew the law.3 We just hoped that the jury, by

the time the trial was over, would have a clearer notion of sex traffick-

ing as it applied to Mr. Paris.

Prosecutor Genco opened for the government, laying out for the jury

the various ways in which Paris had violated federal law. He likened the

trial to a jigsaw puzzle and promised the jurors that by trial’s end all

the pieces would fit. What stood out most was his brief account of how

Brian Forbes, a fellow pimp, had sold Paris two women for $1,200

each, whereupon Paris had stripped, measured, and photographed

them for marketing purposes. It was painfully reminiscent of antebel-

lum slave auctions. Genco explained how Paris had maintained control

over these women by keeping them addicted to heroin and denying

them their “fix” when they balked. He forced them to have sex with

him whenever he wanted and beat, bound, and threatened them regularly.

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He achieved his objectives with the women through force, fraud, and

coercion, the three key criteria of the trafficking law. In addition, Genco

continued, Mr. Paris had prostituted two young girls—ages fourteen

and sixteen—in direct violation of the law prohibiting sex trafficking of

a minor.4

Mr. Donovan, when his turn came, painted quite a different picture:

Dennis Paris was the women’s savior. The pimp Forbes, he argued, was

a brutal bully, and by buying the women from him Paris was “rescuing”

them. No force, fraud, or coercion had been used; these women had

come to Hartford, Connecticut, for the express purpose of making

money, and he had provided them with the opportunity. Paris merely

ran an escort service, and these women were, as Donovan described

them, “stars! There was competition for their services!” They earned

$180 in a half hour, he claimed, and although they had to split it with

Paris and their driver they were still making quite a paycheck. In the

defense attorney’s argument, they had never had it so good. As for the

charge of trafficking minors, Donovan claimed that his client had had

no idea they were underage.

Then two of the girls—Maryanne C. and Ilene W.—took the stand,

and they told a very different story.5 They were both now twenty-one

years old, and native New Englanders—one from Vermont, the other,

New Hampshire. Both had run away from home at an early age, come

to Hartford, and been introduced to Dennis Paris by a friend. Maryanne

had been fourteen at the time, and Paris had promised to find her a

housekeeping job in a hotel. The night she met Paris, he took her to a

Days Inn motel, where they danced. Paris then stripped her, and they

had sex. Within a short time, she was turning tricks for him.

Ilene was sixteen when she was introduced to Paris. She was a fresh-

man in high school (“I should have been a junior, but I got kept back”)

and was recruited in much the same way. Both girls stated that in their

recollection Dennis Paris knew their age at the time. One testified that

he had told her to say she was nineteen.

Two other young women, Melissa P. and Jen D., testified that Paris

had enslaved them to a life of prostitution by keeping them dependent

on heroin. They had both been eighteen when they met Paris, and they

were described by the Hartford
Journal Inquirer
as having been “pretty

blond teenagers from neighboring towns in New Hampshire.” They

had two things in common: a friendship since childhood and heroin

addiction. When Melissa was thrown out of the house because of her

drug habit, her friend Jen introduced her to a Hartford pimp named

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Brian Forbes, who in turn introduced her to “the life”—which Jen was

already living. Soon both girls found that they were under Forbes’s total

control, which took the form of verbal and physical abuse and the with-

holding of drugs. The girls described how, in time, Forbes had sold them

to his friend, Dennis Paris, who continued Forbes’s methods of disci-

pline and control. On one occasion, when Paris suspected Melissa of

talking to the police, he handcuffed and raped her, wrapped her in a

blanket, and put her face down on a bed, letting her know that he was

about to smother her to death. She cried and begged for her life. “I just

made myself deal with the fact that I was going to die,” she told the jury.

Paris suddenly left the room and soon returned with food from

McDonald’s. He laughed and joked and removed Melissa’s handcuffs.

Hysterical, the girl fled.6

On various occasions, the girls in Paris’s charge were treated brutally

by their johns. The common image of the pimp standing between his

“ho” and a john’s abuse is a myth. Instead of protecting them, Paris

forced them to endure whatever physical pain and damage the men

chose to inflict, some of which required medical attention. At his trial,

Paris testified that as far as he was concerned he merely arranged

“dates,” not sex, and that anything that followed was simply a matter of

agreed-upon relations “between two consenting adults.”7

After a little over a week of testimony, closing statements were

made—Andrew Kline delivering the summary for the prosecution—and

the jury retired to consider its verdict. Within a day, they came in with

their findings: “guilty of knowingly using minors . . . in his prostitution

business and also of using force, fraud, and various coercive means to

compel two adult victims to perform commercial sex acts for his finan-

cial benefit.” Paris was also convicted of conspiracy and “13 counts

related to the use of interstate facilities to promote and conduct a pros-

titution business [Paris regularly used cell phones to arrange “dates”],

as well as three counts of money laundering.”8

Since cases involving the sex trafficking of minors do not require the

use of force, fraud, or coercion, even if the girls had willingly gone to

work for Paris, they would be trafficking victims according to law, and

he would be their trafficker. Conviction on charges of sex trafficking a

minor carries a maximum sentence of forty years. If he had been con-

victed solely on the two charges involving force, fraud, and coercion,

Dennis Paris would have faced a possible life sentence and a fine of

$250,000 on each count. But given all the other charges upon which he

was found guilty—such as money laundering and violations of the

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Mann Act—there was the possibility that he would never see the outside

of a prison. But he got off relatively lightly; on October 14, 2008,

Dennis Paris was sentenced to 30 years in prison, plus five years of

supervised release, and ordered to pay over $46,000 in restitution. In a

DOJ press release dated October 20, 2008, Director Robert Moossy of

the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit stated, “The victims . . . con-

tinue to receive medical and psychological treatment. . . . [They’ve] been

able to move on with their lives: All victims who were drug-dependent

have been drug free for over a year; the victims have obtained high

school diplomas; some victims are attending college; they have obtained

driver’s licenses; and, they are finding employment in jobs that they

never dreamed they could obtain.” Moossy might have added that they

are no longer victims; they are survivors.

B A R B I E A N D T H E G O R I L L A P I M P

Not all victims are minors, runaways, or drug addicts. The second of the

two Connecticut cases involving the sexual enslavement of American-

born women,
United States v. Corey Davis, a.k.a. “Magnificent,” and

Shamere McKenzie, a.k.a. “Barbie,”
makes this abundantly clear.

Shamere McKenzie was an attractive, intelligent young woman, a model

student, and, as far as her parents knew, a well-adjusted, happy

teenager. She had attended a New York college on an athletic scholar-

ship and had won numerous awards and medals. She was a “normal”

girl from an average American home.9

Corey Davis—street name “Magnificent”—was a pimp who main-

tained his control through an inordinate reliance on violence; in street

jargon, he was a “gorilla pimp.” One day he pulled up alongside

Shamere in his Mercedes and “sweet-talked her.” Within a short time

they were seeing each other regularly. This part of the pimp’s process,

according to Dr. Lois Lee, founder and president of the California

NGO Children of the Night, is referred to as “copping.” “The

‘straight’ woman who has been ‘copped’ by a pimp,” states Lee, “per-

ceives the relationship as a ‘normal’ man-woman relationship. [She]

usually lacks knowledge of the pimp’s involvement in prostitution at

the beginning.”10

Sensing that Shamere needed money, Davis convinced her that she

could make upwards of $3,000 a weekend by stripping. Soon he was

beating her and forcing her into prostitution. This step in the process is

called “turning out.”11 The final step involves both the physical and psy-

chological manipulation of the woman to better maintain the relationship

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and direct her “career.”12 Pimps are masters of the various techniques

required to keep a woman in “the life.” Under Davis’s control, Shamere’s

life took an interesting but not uncommon turn; she formed a strong

emotional bond with her pimp and went from being just another girl in

Davis’s “stable” to becoming his “bottom.” According to street vernac-

ular, a “bottom,” or “bottom female,” is a pimp’s most trusted prosti-

tute; she collects his money from the other girls, recruits new

prostitutes, and deals with legalities such as posting bond when they are

arrested.13 The elevation of one girl is a divide-and-conquer strategy a

pimp uses to increase his control, creating competition to become his

“bottom.” Shamere—or “Barbie,” as she was now known—had

become “Magnificent’s” most trusted associate, and along with her

other jobs she helped him traffic minors into prostitution. By the time

Shamere saw the inside of a courtroom, she was a defendant, not a victim.

In such cases, it’s up to the prosecutor to determine the nature and

number of charges. Corey “Magnificent” Davis was sentenced to over

twenty-four years for trafficking minors and women into prostitution, but

Shamere was allowed to plead guilty to just one count of the indictment.14

Had the prosecution chosen to bring the hammer down, Shamere could

have faced indictments for sex trafficking and forced labor.

Shamere’s story is a tragedy turned back upon itself. She was, in the

truest sense, a victim, for whom the system now offers little sanctuary.

Women like Shamere, in one victim advocate’s words, “are victims, sur-

vivors, and perpetrators.”15 Of course in this sad story a large cast of

unknown characters were crucial to the plot—the men who paid Corey

Davis to use women and children for sex.

T H E J O H N S

It is obvious that without the demand for the sexual services of women

and young girls there would be no need to write this chapter. Yet the