Wednesday, April 18, 2012
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Forensic experts testified about DNA evidence during the second week of a federal trial involving several defendants accused of using a young Somali female for forced prostitution.
The trial being held in Nashville includes nine out of a total of 30 people who have been accused in an indictment of involvement in a child sexual trafficking ring that prosecutors say was run by Somali gangs and that included sexual acts in Minnesota, Ohio and Tennessee.
The key witness testified last week that she was used as a prostitute by members of Somali gangs starting in the 6th grade. But the trial has been complicated by the fact that both the alleged victim and many of the defendants are from Somali families who fled to the United States as war refugees and who don't have accurate birth records. The other defendants are expected to face trial at a later date.
Her age is in dispute, and it's not clear if she is now a juvenile or a young adult. The indictment says she was a juvenile when she was forced into prostitution, and the court hasn't revealed her name, protecting her identity by calling her Jane Doe 2. The indictment listed four female victims of the sexual trafficking.
But defense attorneys for the nine defendants on Tuesday questioned police and others about whether Jane Doe 2 was a willing participant in the trip to Nashville in April of 2009. She was listed as missing by her family in suburban Minneapolis and police used GPS coordinates from cellphones to track her down in south Nashville.
Police found her with five of the defendants — one of whom she told police was her boyfriend.
Detective Keith Elliott, a Metro Nashville police detective in the sex crimes unit, said he got a call from a St. Paul police officer about the missing female and he went to interview Jane Doe 2. He said she was cooperative with police when they questioned her and agreed to write a statement.
"I think she was a 14-year-old girl who was scared about the situation she was in," he testified.
Defense attorney David Komisar, who is representing Yassin Abdirahman Yusuf, asked the detective whether she said she voluntarily went to Nashville.
Elliott said the defendants picked her up from school and she didn't use the word 'abducted' during their interview in Nashville.
A high school friend of Jane Doe 2 testified that she became concerned when her friend wasn't at school. Kayla Lidberg said when she got in touch with Jane Doe 2 by phone in Nashville, she sounded "dazed and confused, slurring her words." Lidberg said she saw Jane Doe 2 get picked up from school a few days before the trip, but said it didn't appear she was abducted.
Forensic scientists from Minnesota testified that they analyzed DNA swabs from some of the defendants to compare to DNA evidence taken from a rape kit, clothing and bedding.
Katharine Lentz-Lockhart, who worked as a forensic scientist with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said she performed nuclear DNA testing on some of the samples and found that there was a match to one of the defendants, Abdikarim Osman Ali. According to court records, he was never arrested following the indictment and is believed to have left the United States.
Lentz-Lockhart also testified that they found DNA from unidentified people, and noted that some samples can contain DNA evidence from multiple individuals.
Source: AP