Las Vegas man arrested on charges of sex trafficking 14-year-old girl
A 32-year-old man was arrested last week after Las Vegas police said he was sex trafficking a teenager he met online and requiring her to give him all of her money.
Police arrested Devonte James on July 31 after a 14-year-old girl arrested for giving false information to police admitted to prostituting for James after they met on the app Skout in March, according to an arrest report from the Metropolitan Police Department.
The victim told police she and James had sexual relations a few days after she moved in, and she lived with James for about two weeks before he told her she needed to pay for rent through prostitution.
James also gave the victim a phone and “told her he would pay her bill but that she needed to stay in contact with him on a regular basis,” police said in the report.
James told the victim what to charge for her work and did not allow her to communicate with his friends or other pimps, police said.
The victim told police she once spoke to another male at the apartment and James “became upset and threw a piggy bank, striking her in the head,” according to the report.
Child Protective Services previously had been called to the address where James lived, a month before this victim is said to have met him. It is unclear what came of this investigation.
When James was arrested, police found him in a parking lot where he was hitting a woman who was seven months’ pregnant and the mother of his 3-year-old, the arrest report states.
He was charged with kidnapping a minor, sex trafficking a child under 16, accepting the earnings of a prostitute, statutory sexual seduction by a person over 21 and luring a child with a computer for a sex act.
James is being held without bail after getting in a courtroom altercation with another inmate. He is scheduled to appear in court again on Aug. 20.
Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.