SAN FRANCISCO—Chantel Williams, 27, was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison for kidnapping a teenager in 2017 and forcing her into sex trafficking.
Williams was introduced to the victim after she ran away from home in another state. The 15-year-old victim was traveling with a friend, but was abandoned in San Francisco. According to the Mercury News, Williams brought the victim to Sacramento to meet her boyfriend and pimp, Jordan Haywood. The couple sex trafficked the victim for months and marketed the victim from California to Arizona.
“They posted advertisements on the internet using the ‘Backpage’ website to market the victim’s acts of prostitution,” assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Cheng wrote in court records. “They instructed the victim on how to perform the acts of prostitution, and they took her to hotels and the private residences of the clients in these locations.”
In August 2017, Williams and Haywood discovered the victim’s real age and dropped her off in East Palo Alto.
Haywood was indicted in 2019 and pleaded guilty to sex trafficking as part of the plea deal. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison.
According to the California Department of Justice, California is one of the largest sites of human trafficking in the United States. In 2018, the United States reported 10,949 cases of human trafficking. Of that, 1,656 cases were reported in California.
