In a case both her own attorney and a judge said was incomprehensible, a 43-year-old Yakima woman has been sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for sex trafficking her teenage daughter.
“I cannot understand a parent prostituting her child,” Yakima County Superior Court Judge Richard Bartheld said during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing at the Yakima County jail. “You prostituted your daughter to support your drug habit, and you also shared your drug habit with your daughter.”
In addition to the 16 years and nine months she will spend in prison and registering as a sex offender, the mother is permanently banned from having any contact with her daughter without court permission.
The Yakima Herald-Republic is not naming the woman to protect the identity of her daughter, who is a sex crime victim. The newspaper does not name victims of sex crimes without their consent.
In October, the woman pleaded guilty to two counts each of promoting the commercial sex abuse of a minor and violating a no-contact order, as well as one count each of commercial sex abuse of a minor, giving a controlled substance (Percocet) to a minor, witness tampering, and an unrelated eluding charge.
Under state sentencing guidelines, the woman was facing at least 20 years in prison, and as much as 26.5 years, but prosecutors recommended a lower sentence to spare having to put her daughter on the stand to testify against her.
Deputy Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney Holai Holbrook said the girl, who is now 16, was torn about having to testify.
“(The daughter) asked me why I wasn’t charging her because what she did with her mother was 50-50, and if I was charging her mother, why not her?” Holbrook said. “She was 14 when (her mother) started doing this with her daughter. A mother is supposed to protect their child, provide them with an education, a roof over their head.
“Instead, she got into a partnership with her daughter to sell her body to men in this community.”
Holbrook said the woman’s actions also contradicted a presentence interview in which she said she “didn’t hurt my baby.”
Defense Attorney James Kirkham asked the court to abide by the agreement, acknowledging the bizarre nature of the case.
“This is not a relationship between a mother and daughter that any of us can understand,” Kirkham said. “It is born out of drug addiction. (The daughter) indicated she was using and prostituting herself before any interaction with her mother.”
Appearing by Zoom from within the Yakima County jail, the woman also read a statement in court, breaking down at points, saying she was sad for how this had turned out, and that she would try to improve herself.
“My daughter had a wonderful childhood, and I took that away,” she said. “I will be missing out on a lot of years because of what I have done to my daughter.”
No contact ever
Calling the case “absolutely mind-numbing,” Bartheld ordered the woman to have no contact with her daughter ever, warning her that any violation of that order would result in a five-year sentence.
“Even after she’s 18?” the woman asked.
“Especially after 18,” Bartheld said. “You have already ruined her life.”
Bartheld also refused to rescind an order barring her from using a jail phone outside of talking to her lawyer because she might violate the no-contact order.
While in jail, the woman called her daughter and husband and asked the girl not to testify, and do whatever she could to get her out of jail, according to court documents. Holbrook said the woman also told her daughter to run away rather than testify, and recommended she get help in that from some of her “johns.”
Police first contacted the girl in May 2020, when she was going through opioid withdrawal. She told police that her mother got her addicted to pain killers and she started having sex for drug money, according to court documents.
When her mother found out, she “wanted to make sure she did it safely,” court documents said, and would go with her to meet men, made appointments for her daughter and set the prices for the encounter.
The girl’s cellphone records led police to arrest 10 men who they say had sex with her. Of those, eight are currently awaiting trial, while Jose Alejandro Perez-Duran, 38, is wanted on a bench warrant and Daniel Matthew Rodriguez, 39, of Yakima was sentenced last month to nearly four years in prison after entering an Alford plea to two counts of commercial sex abuse of a minor. The plea allows Rodriguez to maintain his innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convince a jury to convict him.
