The ads left little to imagination. The young teen was invariably positioned in soft-porn poses, standing with her hands covering her otherwise naked breasts or lying on the bed in bra and panties or bending over with nearly bare buttocks to the camera.
"EXTREEMLy HOTT & HigHLy ADDiCTiVE," screamed the ads, which were hosted on the controversial, Craigslist-style classified site Backpage.com. "OpEn MiNdEd FrEaK! UlTaMaTe V.i.P. GiRlFriEnD. SuPer SoAkin Fun." Morning and afternoon specials available. (Backpage and the Observer were owned by the same company until September, when the paper's longtime owners sold to a group of younger company executives. The two companies are no longer affiliated.)
But the girl wasn't 19 like the ads promised. She was 15, and all the ads weren't placed by her. They were arranged by a Tarrant County couple, Deundrea Miller, 27, and Brittanie Brattain, 21, who the feds say pimped the girl out for four months, keeping all the proceeds.
Brattain was indicted on Wednesday, a month after a special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and member of the North Texas Trafficking Task Force first detailed the alleged scheme in a federal court filing.
It all started in September, when the girl met Brattain and followed her to a second floor room in the Motel 6 at Oakland Street and Interstate 30 in Forth Worth, where she was introduced to Miller, aka D Magic. He was sitting on the bed next to an infant who was apparently Miler and Brattain's child.
Brattain stripped the girl down to her panties, looped a silver necklace around her neck and started to snap pictures with her cell phone. Miller uploaded the photos under the name "Jewel." Then the three of them smoked weed.
The first night, three men came. Brattain told them the girl was "new" and had asked not to be hurt. Then she went into the bathroom while the men had sex with her, ostensibly to ensure the girl's safety but also, it seemed, so she could be nearby when the girl collected her fee, which was typically $120 for 30 minutes, $160 for the full hour. Brattain and Miller took all of it.
The next morning, authorities say, Miller woke her up and drove her to a home in Fort Worth, where she had sex with another man. In the weeks that followed, she was a frequent guest at the Motel 6, Scottish Inn, and Baymont Inn, all just off I-35W in Fort Worth, and at a duplex on Trail Lake Drive in Fort Worth. The men came and went, but Miller and Brattain were always there.
It went on for four months before the girl ran away and wound up at the Tarrant County Juvenile Services Detention Center, where she told investigators about Brattain and Miller and what they had allegedly made her do.
A week later, agents received records from Backpage on a slew of advertisements featuring the girl, most of them arranged by someone using Brattain's email. Some of the ads specifically listed Brattain as the purchaser. On Miller's iPhone, which was searched while he was in jail, they found numerous semi-nude photos of the girl, plus video footage of a domestic scene featuring the girl at home with Miller, Brattain and their baby.
Brattain is already serving seven years for violating her probation on a previous charge of promoting prostitution, according to the Star-Telegram. If convicted, she faces another 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000. So does Miller, though he has not yet been formally indicted.
