CHARLOTTE — A Charlotte man is behind bars after being accused of trafficking a 16-year-old girl. Investigators said he found the teen on social media and manipulated her into prostitution.
Channel 9′s Hannah Goetz spoke exclusively with Lt. Chris Smith from the Cabarrus County Sheriff’s Office about the case.
Twenty-five-year-old Steven Price has been charged with kidnapping, human trafficking of a child victim, and two counts of promoting prostitution.
According to the sheriff’s office, the investigation started in October when the agency’s Human Trafficking Unit flagged an online prostitution ad of what looked like a young female victim.
In an undercover operation, they responded to the ad, and when the victim showed up, they identified her as 16 years old and quickly got her medical attention. She was eventually placed into the care of Child Protective Services.
Price was taken into custody on Tuesday. He is accused of finding the victim on a popular social media app.
“He was able to manipulate this victim into doing this type of behavior for his personal gain, financial gain, in those conversations, and that data was used to determine what he was doing, that he obviously had kept her against her will and was forcing her into doing sex acts for money,” said Smith. “It’s very alarming for an adult to be soliciting a child on social media, and it’s very alarming to think the public is here’s an innocent 16-year-old child who is chatting with someone who she thinks is going to be her friend and, in turn, gets forced into sex acts with adults across a couple of counties in a very short period of time.”
The investigation was a cooperative effort between the Criminal Investigation Division at Cabarrus County, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
Smith credits the start of the investigation to their unique Human Trafficking Team dedicated to this type of work.
“They spend the majority of their time working either doing undercover chat investigations, working online to identify what they would deem or not deem a younger victim, and working to rescue those victims,” Smith elaborated. “You don’t know who you’re chatting with behind that screen until you’re there. Don’t take for granted that it’s what you see on the screen. It could be a bad guy that’s trying to put you into a, in this case, sex trafficking role, where you’re forced to do things at an age that that’s going to cause you a lot of trauma. At any age.”
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