Monday afternoon, the same day Governor Rick Perry announced a statewide advertising campaign to combat human trafficking, Dallas' Dereck Johnson pleaded guilty to that offense in United States District Court.
According to court documents, on June 1, 2012, Johnson lured a 15-year-old girl away from the Downtown Dallas Greyhound Station. The girl was on her way to Arizona to visit a friend and told Johnson she was 15 and her parents did not know where she was.
Johnson got the girl to leave the station with him, telling her that he would help her find Wi-Fi for her cell phone. Instead he had a friend pick the pair up and bring them back to friend's apartment.
While at the house, Johnson used and provided the teenager with methamphetamine, before his friend kicked the duo out after finding out the girl's age.
Johnson's friend drove them back to Greyhound station. From there they took a cab to a Flying J truck stop, from which a trucker gave them a ride to the Dallas South Greyhound station, located directly across from a Love's truck stop.
At the station, the 15-year-old talked to her father briefly on an employee's cell phone, but couldn't tell him where she was before she rushed off the phone. Johnson forced her to leave the station and go with him to the Love's, where he found a trucker to take them to Houston.
At Johnson's next stop, another Flying J, he received money for the girl's repeatedly being raped by a truck driver.
Finally, on June 5, the victim was able to contact her father after she was able to plug in her cell phone while taking a shower at the truck stop and her aunt came and picked her up.
Federal prosecutors and Johnson's lawyer have agreed to jointly recommend a 15 year sentence at Johnson's September sentencing hearing.
