A man and woman face charges in the alleged prostitution of a 14-year-old girl in Vancouver.
Ricky D. Horn, 18, of Vancouver pleaded not guilty today to promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor and remains in custody on $100,000 bail.
His codefendant, Kelsey L. Vestal, 26, made a first appearance today in Clark County Superior Court on suspicion of the same crime and was held on $40,000 bail. Vestal will be arraigned on Friday.
This is what happened, according to a probable cause affidavit:
The victim said she knew the suspects as “Rico” and “Jessica.” She had lied to the suspects about her real name, calling herself “Rose Ramirez.”
Sometime between Sept. 15 and Oct. 1, Horn took the victim to Vestal’s apartment. The two suspects then allegedly used one of their cellphones to take photographs of the victim wearing her underwear and posted the pictures on Backpage.com.
The victim said she was prostituted about 15 times at the Days Inn, 9107 N.E. Van Mall Drive, but only had sex with two males. The other times, she said she robbed the johns of their money. She said Vestal instructed her to have the johns place their payments on a counter before doing whatever the johns wanted, and the suspect gave her a price list for a variety of sexual acts. She said Vestal told her that if she didn’t comply, she would regret it.
The arrests came after seven months of investigation by Vancouver police detectives with the Digital Evidence and Cybercrime Unit, according to spokeswoman Kim Kapp.
