Sex trafficking plea deal unending 'nightmare' for Texas mom
Irma Reyes feels like she can't wake up from nightmare
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Your support makes all the difference.Irma Reyes changed clothes in the back seat of the pickup: skirt, tights, turtleneck, leather jacket. All black. She brushed her hair and pulled on heels as her husband drove their Chevy through predawn darkness toward a courthouse hundreds of miles from home.
She wanted to look confident ā poised but hellbent. The outfit was meant to let Texas prosecutors know just what kind of formidable mother theyād be crossing that morning.
Weeks earlier, Reyes learned about the plea deal. State lawyers planned to let the two men charged with sex trafficking her daughter walk free.
Sheād barely been able to eat or brush her teeth since, her mind racing: Why are they doing this? Can I get the judge to stop it? Donāt they know my daughter matters?
Reyes' daughter was 16 in 2017, when men she knew only as āRockyā and āBlueā kept her and another girl at a San Antonio motel where men paid to have sex with them. Now, the cases against Rakim Sharkey and Elijah Teel ā the men police identified as the traffickers ā have seen years of delay, a parade of prosecutors, an aborted trial and, ultimately, a stark retreat by the government.
They are among thousands of cases under a cloud of dysfunction at the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose legal troubles include a criminal investigation by Justice Department officials in Washington. Trafficking cases in particular have come under scrutiny and cast doubt on how the agency, which fights court battles affecting people far beyond Texas, uses millions of state tax dollars on an issue that Republican leaders trumpet as a priority while attacking Democrats' approach to border security.
For Reyes, her daughter, and other victims and families, the politics take a backseat to their pain. To them, the plea deal is a case study in how the agency's troubles are undercutting justice for vulnerable victims.
A spokeswoman for the attorney generalās office, Kristen House, declined to answer questions about the deal, the actions of prosecutors, and other details of the case involving Reyes' daughter.
āItās like a nightmare that I canāt wake up from,ā Reyes told The Associated Press.
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The case was ready for trial years before that January day Reyes and her husband made their way to the San Antonio courthouse, said Kirsta Leeburg Melton.
āYou will not find a stronger corroborated case,ā said Melton, who oversaw the attorney generalās human trafficking unit until late 2019 and now runs the Institute to Combat Trafficking. āAnd Iām sick. Itās wrong.ā
In the courthouse, Reyesā stomach churned as she thought of the deal for the two men: five years of probation. The original charges carried potential sentences of decades in prison.
āI need to puke,ā said Reyes, 45, her heels clicking down the hallway to the bathroom.
Inside the crowded courtroom, she waited on a back bench for hours, watching people charged with drug crimes and drunken driving draw harsher sentences.
One of the defendants walked in and sat for a while on the same bench. Just one person separated them, but he seemed not to recognize Reyes. She squeezed her husbandās hand.
When the judge got to their case, she summarized its twists and turns: years lost to the pandemic, delays due to āturnover in the attorney generalās office,ā days of testimony last year only for several people to catch COVID-19 and prompt a mistrial.
A defense attorney for Sharkey said his client was in a āstrong positionā for acquittal but would accept the deal to put the case behind him. Reyes listened in disbelief as the new prosecutor told the judge that Reyesā daughter ā now a 22-year-old with whom she keeps up a steady stream of text messages ā was āon the run.ā
Sharkey and Teel pleaded āno contestā to aggravated promotion of prostitution. The judge, Velia Meza, sentenced the men to seven years of probation, despite prosecutors recommending five, adding that theyād be strictly supervised but wouldnāt have to register as sex offenders.
Then, it was Reyesā turn. Meza would allow a victim impact statement.
Reyes walked slowly to the front of the court, clutching her handwritten statement. She thought of her daughter: a beautiful soul who blasts BeyoncƩ and loves her dogs, a fighter who overcame a lifetime of struggles to get sober, a woman who took the witness stand just months earlier against the man charged with trafficking her.
Reyes reached the waiting bailiff. She took the microphone.
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Reyesā daughter lost a brother when she was young. Then her estranged father died. She was bullied at school.
The AP is withholding the young womanās name, in keeping with its policy to avoid identifying victims of sexual assault and other such crimes. Reyes told AP she spoke about this story with her daughter, who did not want to comment or be interviewed directly.
Reyes said that as a girl, her daughter would run away from the large familyās South Texas home. By her teens, she started using drugs and getting psychological care through the juvenile justice system. In September 2017, she was sent to a rehabilitation center.
Court records show it was only days after Reyesā daughter and another girl ran away from rehab that their photos were advertised online for ādatesā out of a motel room off the interstate. They met āBlueā outside a motel, where they couldn't afford a night's stay. He introduced them to āRocky.ā The pair rented the girls a room, helped set up meetings with men whoād pay for sex, and collected half the money at the end of each day, according to the records.
Reyesā daughter later testified that when one of the men hit her, she got scared and called her mom. Reyes found the phone number advertised on Backpages.com, a classifieds website later shut down by law enforcement. She called police; officers found the girls at the motel that night.
Ten days after running away, Reyesā daughter was in a juvenile lockup talking to a detective who would spend months tracking down the men.
āWeāre able to get the surveillance video. We were able to get room receipts. We were able to get cellphones, which were extracted for data,ā detective Manuel Anguiano told AP. āI donāt think Iāve ever worked a case that had more evidence.ā
Several people who worked on the case told AP they were outraged by the attorney general's office's final resolution.
āItās absolutely an unfortunate outcome,ā said Cara Pierce, who oversaw the agency's human trafficking unit until August 2022. āThis was a triable case when I left."
Sharkeyās lawyer, Jason Goss, maintains the jury would have acquitted his client but told AP he had no choice but to plead no contest to the reduced charge because the potential sentence of 25 years to life was too risky. Teelās attorney, Brian Powers, didn't respond to phone messages and emails seeking comment.
After getting out of the detention facility, Reyesā daughter lived away from home for a while, then returned to her motherās house on a quiet, residential block.
She barely left her spartan bedroom, Reyes said, and couldnāt talk about what had happened. Reyes in turn got anxious when her daughter was around men. They avoided crowds.
Reyes coaxed her back into the world. She brought her treats ā Flaminā Hot Cheetos and LimĆ³n Lays ā and the book āWomen Who Run with the Wolves.ā
Gradually, they ventured out, taking morning walks in a nature preserve, watching the birds while eating lunch in Reyesā car. But the young woman still had panic attacks, sometimes shutting herself in the bathroom.
Thatās where she was when Connie Spence, a prosecutor who signed on to the case in summer 2020, arrived to talk, Reyes said. Spence got down on the floor, speaking calmly as the young woman hyperventilated.
After that, Reyes said, her daughter began weekly counseling. She started volunteering at a library and museum. She reenrolled in school and, last June, mother and daughter drove together to San Antonio to testify.
āThey built a bond somehow,ā Reyes said. āConnie gave her hope.ā
On the witness stand, Reyesā daughter struggled to breath and had difficulty recalling details from years before. But over hours of testimony she recounted how she came to be having sex to at the motel to pay "Rocky.ā She testified that he got mad after she spoke to other men there, taking her into a room and hitting her across the face.
Asked to identify āRocky,ā the young woman pointed across the courtroom at Sharkey.
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Four days later, Reyes and her daughter were relaxing in the summer heat on their patio when Spence called to tell them the judge had declared a mistrial because four people in the courtroom caught COVID-19.
They told themselves testifying would be easier the second time. All three women agreed to go back to court as many times as needed.
But it would be the last time they spoke to Spence.
She left the attorney generalās office the following month, according to personnel files obtained under public records laws. Spenceās resignation letter gives no reason. She didnāt respond to calls and messages seeking comment.
Spence left amid a wave of seasoned prosecutors quitting over practices they said were meant to slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent. The next month, the office dropped a separate series of trafficking and child sexual assault cases after losing track of one of the victims.
In October, Reyes was introduced to new lead lawyer James Winters ā the last of eight prosecutors to handle the case for the attorney general's office, court records show. Reyes said her daughter told Winters she would testify again.
The lawyer later asked that the case be postponed again, but the judge refused. Reyes didnāt hear from prosecutors again until early January, when Winters called about the plea deal. It was a couple weeks after her daughter had left home.
In the silence, sheād grown pessimistic about the case. They had a fight, Reyes said. The young woman went to stay with a friendās family.
Reyes worried about her daughter and whether she might turn to old habits. She spent Christmas with the family, but left soon after.
Still, a victimās advocate told prosecutors that Reyes could get her daughter to court, internal office messages obtained by AP show. Reyes doesnāt understand why Winters later told the judge her daughter was āon the run.ā
Winters, who referred emailed questions to an attorney general's spokesman, submitted his resignation letter three weeks after appearing in court for the plea deal, which was first reported by Texas Public Radio.
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In San Antonio, Reyes clutched her jacket around her shoulders as she reached the front of the courtroom and took the microphone for her victim impact statement.
She'd spent lunch writing out what she wanted to say, but rage got the better of her planning. She looked at the men accused of trafficking her daughter and two other girls, at the lawyers flanking their clients, at men who'd also gotten probation on charges of soliciting and paying the girls for sex.
Reyes began speaking quietly, the statement still crumpled under her jacket.
āRakim, can you look at me?ā she said, as Sharkey examined his hands. āYou have daughters. Going on your third. Exactly the number of victims.ā
She told one of the men who'd paid for sex that she's glad his family left him.
And she gestured at Winters, the prosecutor. āHe doesnāt represent me. I represent myself right now. I'm not afraid of you."
Reyes spoke for nearly five minutes, her voice rising as she turned to face the courtroom and beseeched people who were being trafficked to come forward.
āThere are victims out there that this minute are being pimped by these types of guys, this type of trash,ā she said. āAnd the trash is supposed to be disposed. But theyāre lucky today.ā
Reyes' voice broke.
"What these people do to their victims ā nothing will ever fix that," she said. āWe just try to hold on.ā
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Reyes cried on the way home, but the drive otherwise passed in silence. Her husband, who doesnāt speak much English, hadnāt followed everything in court. Reyes didnāt know how to explain.
She also didnāt know how to tell her daughter, who'd already lost hope the men would go to prison.
Reyes wanted her to come home, to talk in person. But her daughterās bedroom was empty.
Reyes felt isolated and got little rest, with violent nightmares. She kept the blinds drawn. She struggled to breathe and fantasized about feeling nothing.
Two days after the hearing, Reyes sat alone in her bedroom, where crosses line the walls. She felt abandoned by the prosecutors, by the judge, by her family, by God. She thought about how she would take her own life. The idea seemed soothing. Her thoughts grew specific. But then she thought of her children and called a crisis hotline.
āI just swim into my thoughts,ā she said. āItās like a big ocean once you let your mind wander. But pulling yourself back up, thatās where I have to be aware that I donāt dive too deep.ā
Reyes turned 46 the next week. She spent her birthday at the doctorās office. She cried uncontrollably. The doctor prescribed anti-anxiety medicine.
Reyes is in therapy. Sheās signed up for dance classes and walks her dogs in the nature preserve, hoping her daughter will join them soon.
She's still grasping for closure. Reyes filed complaints with the attorney generalās office, the state bar association and the U.S. Department of Justice, although none will reopen the criminal case. Perhaps her best hope from the legal system is a civil lawsuit that she hopes her daughter will one day be ready to bring.
She and her daughter talk more lately. Their texts are filled with worry but also jokes and photos.
One day, Reyesā son shook her awake at 3 a.m. A sheriffās deputy was on the phone and said her daughter had called 911 having a panic attack; she said she wanted to go home.
Iāve lived this before, Reyes thought. She asked the deputy to wait with her daughter.
Then she pulled on shoes, climbed into the pickup and drove out into the night.
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EDITORāS NOTE ā This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
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Associated Press photographer Eric Gay and videojournalist Lekan Oyekanmi contributed to this report.