INTERNET CHILD PROSTITUTION DEFENDANT PLEADS GUILTY

A Detroit woman who helped run a nationwide internet child prostitution network pled guilty in federal court today, United States Attorney Stephen J. Murphy announced.

Murphy was joined in the announcement by Andrew G. Arena, Special Agent-In-Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Detroit field office.

Stephanie Head, a/k/a "Chocolate," 22, of Detroit pled guilty to distributing child pornography before United States District Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff. Head admitted that she and a co-defendant, Robert Daniels, a/k/a “Motor City Mink,” 28, solicited and trained minors as young as 15 to engage in prostitution.

In the course of operating the prostitution network, Head took sexually explicit photographs of minors and uploaded these photographs to Craigslist.org and other internet sites on which prostitution services were advertised. Between February 2005 and March 2008, more than 2,800 advertisements for prostitution were posted by defendants in Houston, Texas, Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Cleveland, Ohio, Washington, D.C., College Park, Maryland and New York City, New York.

Locally, Head admitted that she and Daniels rented hotel rooms in Southfield, where Head photographed minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and also provided rooms for minors and adults to perform sex acts for money.

United States Attorney Stephen J. Murphy said, "The United States Attorney's Office and our law enforcement partners are committed to making defendants answer for crimes that exploit and abuse the most vulnerable among us, our children. Society has no tolerance for child prostitution. These children are victimized twice; first by the handlers, and second by those who solicit them."

Head will be sentenced on November 4, 2008 at 10:00 a.m.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood. In February 2006, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales launched Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys Offices, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov/.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leonid Feller and Matthew Roth.