An Alabama father and son were among five individuals sentenced Thursday in a sex trafficking case that included the victimization of seven people, two of whom were minors.
Thirty-two-year-old Kimani Jones was the ringleader of the operation. He was sentenced to 54 years in prison while his father, 50-year-old Tremayne Lambert, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Public Affairs announced.
Both men are from Montgomery and were convicted on charges of sex trafficking after a trial in October. The defendants were also ordered to pay $1,010,926.50 and $510,850, respectively, in restitution to the victims they targeted.
The other three co-defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced for their roles in the case. They were identified as, “Joseph Keon Bowe, 39, of Notasulga, Alabama, was sentenced to 235 months in prison and ordered to pay $3,200 in restitution. Daryle Gardner, 32, of Marbury, Alabama, was sentenced to 195 months in prison and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution. Aleecia Scott, 30, of Dothan, Alabama, was sentenced to 36 months of probation and ordered to pay $1,000 in restitution.”
The five individuals were sentenced to a total of 120 years in prison. The DOJ’s press release detailed the crimes, noting that Jones forced women and girls to participate in the operation through violence and abuse:
Jones rented hotel rooms where commercial sex acts occurred; provided food, clothing and drugs to the victims; constructed advertisements for commercial sex that he then posted online to solicit customers; communicated with potential customers regarding the sex acts and prices involved for them; dictated in which cities the victims would live and engage in commercial sex acts; and set rules that he required the victims to follow, which included, for example, the minimal amount of money that they needed to earn each day. Jones did not have a lawful job during the years he ran his sex trafficking operation, but instead, lived off the earnings of the sex trafficking and frequently flaunted the money that he made on social media.
The DOJ said Jones dragged one of the victims by the throat, hit others in the face, knocked out one victim’s teeth, broke another’s jaw, and hit another victim so hard she urinated on herself:
Jones also sexually assaulted the victims to assert his dominance and control over them, threatened to hurt them, and in some instances, their family members, telling one victim that her son would not be able to play sports if his legs were broken. Jones, who has a prior federal conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm, also intimidated the victims by possessing, brandishing and shooting firearms within the victims’ presence. He also facilitated addiction to drugs, such as heroin and methamphetamine, to compel their continued commercial sex acts for his financial benefit.
The DOJ defines human trafficking as “a crime involving the exploitation of a person for labor, services, or commercial sex.”
According to Exodus Cry, an organization whose mission is to abolish sex trafficking, the practice “is a result of male demand for prostitution.”
“If sex trafficking is fueled by men’s demand for prostitution, then there is ultimately only one way to abolish it. We must eliminate the demand,” Exodus Cry explained in a 2019 video:
In a statement regarding the Alabama case, Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said, “Today’s lengthy sentences reflect the heinous and depraved conduct of the defendants, who abused numerous women and girls for years. The Department of Justice is committed to rooting out sex trafficking in the United States, seeking lengthy sentences for perpetrators and obtaining restitution for survivors so they can rebuild their lives. I thank the prosecutors and law enforcement who tirelessly pursued what was right and brought this case to a just conclusion.”
