A man who kidnapped a 15-year-old girl last year and held her hostage to be a prostitute has pleaded guilty in Clark County Superior Court to the promotion of commercial sexual abuse of a minor.
It’s the first conviction of a child sex trafficker in Clark County and comes on the heels of an emerging crackdown on the issue by local prosecutors and police, officials say.
Darius D. Yancey, 22, of the Vancouver-Portland area, is expected to receive 10 years and two months in prison when he’s sentenced April 23, under the state’s sentencing guidelines.
Yancey also pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree kidnapping with sexual motivation before Superior Court Judge Robert Lewis.
Prosecutors allege that Yancey met the girl, then 15, through an acquaintance at her high school. He developed a sexual relationship with her in early July 2009, taking her to Bellevue without the consent of her foster parents.
Once in the Puget Sound area, they checked in to several hotels, and he solicited her for prostitution on Internet sites.
According to court papers, when johns called her for service, he told her what to say, keeping a black spiral notebook with notes. When johns arrived, Yancey would wait in a vehicle out front. Afterward, he’d forced the girl to give him the money.
She made $1,000 while prostituting, which she gave to Yancey, according to court papers.
While in Bellevue, as she later told Vancouver police investigators, she tried to flee but he physically assaulted and choked her as she ran for the door.
In late July, after spending about a week in Bellevue, the two returned to his Vancouver residence. That’s when the girl — in her pajamas and without shoes on — ran away and alerted a local business for help, Clark County Deputy Prosecutor Anna Klein said.
A warrant was issued in October for Yancey’s arrest, and he was picked up in Portland in January.
The victim did not face any criminal prosecution.
Yancey was being held in the Clark County Jail on Friday. Attempts to reach his court-appointed attorney, Jeff Witteman, weren’t successful Friday.
Klein said Yancey could have faced federal charges as well as charges in Multnomah County, Oregon, but they were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea in Clark County.
Though the promotion of commercial sexual abuse of a minor case happened in King County, Yancey filed a waiver of venue so he could resolve the charge locally, Klein said.
A number of promoting prostitution, or pimping, cases have emerged in Clark County Superior Court, but this is the first conviction involving the solicitation of a child, Klein said.
“I don’t know if (the problem has) just gone undetected,” she said. But “I think it’s starting to be focused on even more.”
The issue was once believed to be a Portland-only phenomenon, but has gathered steam over the past year, as prosecutors and police have undergone training programs. They now recognize it as a salient issue for Vancouver, as well.
Recent statistics suggest about 40 percent of child prostitutes picked up in Portland are from Clark County.
Linda Smith, a former congresswoman who launched Vancouver’s Shared Hope International to target global sex slavery, said she believes the inaugural prosecution of Yancey is a sign of the changing mind-set.
“I think what you got here is a new awakening,” Smith said Friday. “We have an active group of prosecutors and police that are serious about making Clark County a no-sale zone.”
Smith was a strong advocate for a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this month to impose tougher penalties for child sex traffickers, boosting the sentencing range from the current 21 to 144 months to 93 to 318 months and raising the fine from $550 to $5,000. At last word, the bill was headed for the governor’s desk.
