Defendant Also Ordered to Pay $10,000 in Restitution
WASHINGTON - Primous Williams, Jr., 32, of Beltsville, Md., has been sentenced to four years in prison for trafficking a 16-year-old girl and for pandering an adult woman for commercial sex acts at a house in Southeast Washington, U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu announced today.
Williams pled guilty in February 2018, in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, to a charge of attempted sex trafficking of children and a charge of pandering. The plea, which was subject to the Court’s approval, called for a prison term of two to four years. The Honorable Ronna L. Beck accepted the plea on Sept. 4, 2018, and sentenced the defendant accordingly.
Upon completion of his prison term, Williams will be placed on three years of supervised release. He also will be required to register as a sex offender for a period of 10 years. This sentence is to run concurrent to a sentence in Prince George’s County, Md., for related conduct. Judge Beck also ordered Williams to pay restitution in the amount of $10,000 to the two victims, with $9,200 to be paid to the minor victim and $800 to be paid to the adult victim.
According to the government’s evidence, in May 2016, Williams met the minor victim through a young adult who worked for him. Beginning from the first day that he met her, Williams posted ads featuring the minor victim on Backpage.com. He set the prices for commercial sex acts that she performed at a house in Southeast Washington and kept all of the money that she earned. He kept her highly intoxicated with a combination of marijuana and “molly" (an illegal psychoactive drug), which he provided. The minor victim performed commercial sex acts for Williams’s benefit several times a day up until June 2016. Another woman, an adult, also worked for Williams, in the same capacity as the minor victim, at the house in Washington, D.C.
In June 2016, the minor victim and the adult victim were recovered from a hotel in Prince George’s County during an anti-human trafficking sting operation. Both were engaged in commercial sex at the direction of Williams.
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Liu commended the work of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), which investigated the case. She also acknowledged the efforts of those who worked on the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Victim/Witness Advocate Lezlie Richardson and Paralegal Specialists Tiffany Jones and T.J. McPhail. Finally, she expressed appreciation for the work of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kenya K. Davis and Stuart D. Allen, who investigated and prosecuted the case, and who serve as the co-chairs of the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
