‘Why me?’ NC runaway confronts repeat sex trafficker on her ruined childhood
The girl with long brown hair looked across the courtroom Monday at the man she says robbed and ruined her childhood.
“Why me? Why us? Why kids?” she said into a microphone inside Charlotte’s federal courthouse. Her reddened eyes widened as she looked toward 34-year-old Yusef Reynolds — the orange-cloaked defendant guilty of sex trafficking her when she was a 16-year-old who had run away from home.
In cases like Reynolds’, which involve sensitive information about minor victims, documents are sealed and details are scant. His sentencing hearing Monday inside the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina gave rare insight into how U.S. attorneys, federal defenders and federal judges navigate proceedings on the under-reported crime of sex trafficking.
The girl, identified in court records only as J.C., had issues with her boyfriend and had run away from her Massachusetts home to North Carolina when she and Reynolds started messaging on Facebook in December 2021, prosecutors said.
Knowing her age, Reynolds asked her to move to Delaware. That’s where he was, under federal probation after serving 10 years in prison for a nearly identical sex trafficking crime.
In Delaware in 2012, he messaged a 15-year-old girl on Facebook and eventually coerced her into a life of prostitution, according to a previous news release from Delaware’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. It was a “pimp” scheme that exploited vulnerable children, the federal official said at the time.
NC teen knew Reynolds as ‘Rojo’
J.C. could be a millionaire by 21, Reynolds told his victim, according to messages prosecutors referenced in court Monday. To J.C., who had little support around her at the time, that sounded like greener grass, assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Spaugh said.
J.C. agreed to move, and Reynolds sent two people to pick up the 16-year-old. Once she arrived in Delaware, he controlled her, prosecutors said.
She knew him only as “Rojo.”
Rojo controlled her sleep, she later told police, giving her drugs to keep her awake so she could “do plays” — or perform sexual acts. Rojo also made her produce child pornography. Rojo controlled when and what she ate, only feeding her when she would cooperate, according to prosecutors.
Reynolds’ federal defender John Parke Davis questioned J.C.’s recollection of these events, saying her story morphed over time and some details and timelines didn’t line up. He also noted that she told Reynolds on Facebook that she previously worked in prostitution and “she wished she was back in the life of prostitution.”
Davis asked U.S District Judge David C. Norton to consider a sentence of nearly 22 years, rather than prosecutors’ request for 27.
Spaugh objected to the shorter sentence, saying It would send the message that “its not so bad to pimp out kids if they’re not perfect.” J.C.’s unstable background is exactly why Reynolds targeted her, Spaugh said.
Cases like Reynolds’ are “extremely difficult to investigate and prosecute,” U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson told The Charlotte Observer. “Victims can seem like criminals if police don’t have the full story, and victims are afraid to come forward.”
In court, J.C. told Reynolds he ruined her childhood, but that she has found beauty in the woman she is today: someone who is completely independent, relying on nobody and paying her own bills. In the courtroom’s pews, more than 25 friends and family surrounded her before she walked up to the microphone.
She was in control now, confronting Reynolds on a day that was also her first as a college student.
“You will never make me feel scared again,” she said.
Repeat sex trafficker sentenced in Charlotte
Reynolds spoke directly to Norton before his victim took the stand.
“There’s really no justification,” Reynolds said. “I was wrong the second I said two words to [J.C.]... and brought her into a lifestyle she had no place in.
“I was the one calling the shots.. I tricked myself into thinking shopping sprees, fancy dinners and nice clothes made it better... I kind of felt like I was better than the other guys who live this lifestyle... but it’s not what its cracked up to be. I’m not proud of it.
“My consequences are not close to the consequences the girls will live with.”
Reynolds’ messages, obtained by investigators and referenced in court, confirmed he was trafficking one other woman and alluded to more, Spaugh said.
One message read: “Every ho has a different role because everyone wants something different... I can’t put a quarterback on the basketball court, ya dig?”
Reynolds, under any sentence length on the table Monday, would not be released from prison until he was in his 50s, Davis said while arguing for a shorter sentence.
“He would only do this again if he decides he wants to die in prison.”
Norton denied Davis’ request and sentenced Reynolds to 27 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release for sex trafficking of a minor by force, fraud, or coercion.
To understand Reynolds’ lack of respect for the law, Norton said, all one has to do is look at his previous cases and the tattoo on his neck.
“C.R.E.A.M.,” it read. Stands for “Cash Rules Everything Around Me,” Norton said.
Clearly, the judge said, Reynolds did not care about the girls he coerced, the laws he broke or the lives he ruined. He only cared about the money he pocketed.
During the proceeding, Reynolds looked behind him once, toward the rows of seating for courtroom observers. His mother wanted to be there, Davis said, but had a surgery. None of his family was present.
