Nearly a week after the arrest of the man the FBI says masterminded a multistate prostitution ring, possible victims continue to step forward and the 17-year-old girl and security guard who helped break open the case are being heralded as heroes.
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FBI officials in Cleveland say they plan to interview two more people who say they were victims of Henry Davis, 32, of Chicago. Authorities say he lured girls as young as 13 to earn money by selling jewelry, then trapped them in a prostitution gang.
At least 12 other girls and women have called Detroit authorities since hearing of Davis’ arrest Monday.
“We’re trying to determine if there are any other victims in the Cleveland area that maybe have been reluctant to report it,” said FBI Special Agent Robert Hawk. FBI officials also are investigating why Davis was in Cleveland this month.
“There’s a reason why they picked Cleveland. It’s not that they were driving by one day. We want to know why,” said Hawk, who added that officials are investigating whether Davis or his associates have relatives in Ohio.
FBI officials in Chicago and Detroit are conducting similar investigations, authorities said.
To outreach workers who counsel Chicago girls and women forced into prostitution, the story has a familiar ring.
“They don’t have a place to stay or a way to earn money to eat,” said Barbara Bolsen, director of outreach and house ministry for Night Ministry in Chicago. “When they are young–14, 15 years old–they don’t have the wisdom to make a good judgment if someone makes an offer to help.”
“There are a variety of stories given to bring girls in,” said Claudine O’Leary, director of Young Women’s Empowerment Project, a Chicago non-profit organization.
“It starts out with ‘I just want to take some pictures,’ or ‘I just need some help.’ They are told a story, but once in the car or apartment, someone looks at them and says, ‘Forget that, this is what’s happening.’ It can be very frightening.”
Davis’ arrest came six months after Detroit police started focusing on the case. Until last week, they found victims’ stories of rape and cultlike abuse difficult to prove.
The same characteristics that made Davis’ victims targets also made them unreliable witnesses, authorities say. The girls often were runaways who were hard to locate or afraid to talk to the police, according to Detroit police Cmdr. Gerard Simon.
Often, they couldn’t remember details, such as a street or hotel name or even a full name of a suspect. Davis, police have learned, was known as “Chicago,” “Tony” or “Mr. Daddy.”
All that changed on Monday, when a girl ran up to Dorian McConnell, a Tact Security Co. guard working in a Detroit-area shoe store, and asked for help.
According to the authorities, the girl had been abducted from a Cleveland bus stop Jan. 9 and taken through Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. She was raped twice and subjected to the group’s “beatdown” or “violate” ritual, in which victims were hit and kicked for misbehaving, they say.
On the fourth day, the girl ran into a Foot Locker in Highland Park, a small community surrounded by Detroit.
“She looked strange,” McConnell said Saturday, describing the girl’s ratty hair and a large bruise on her cheek. She was with two other girls who looked a few years older, he said.
“She asked if I was a police officer and I said no,” said McConnell, 29, adding he directed the girl to a police mini-station next door in the shopping center.
The girl’s shoulders fell, he said, and the group left. But about 10 minutes later the girl burst into the store as if she were running away, McConnell said. She was. Trailing behind her were the two other females and three men, McConnell said.
She was.
Trailing behind her were the two other females and three men, McConnell said.
“They walked fast,” he said. “They caught up to her and were tugging on her sleeve and whispering in her ear. . . . She looked upset.”
McConnell said the girl was able to break free and run toward him. “She was hiding behind me. . . She was pulling on my arm saying, ‘Help me, please, help me.’ “
One of the women in the group said the girl was her sister, according to McConnell, but the girl responded that she didn’t know them.
McConnell called another guard, and the two backed the group up to the front door. McConnell said they still refused to leave, so he reminded them that the police were nearby.
McConnell thought that prompted them to leave. But when he turned around, he said, one of the females in the group was back.
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“She’s behind the register grabbing [the girl] and trying to coax her to go again,” he said.
Police praised McConnell for holding his ground and said his actions likely saved the girl. Authorities also praised the girl’s own fortitude.
“There is a paramilitary-like efficiency in how [the gang members] bait the hook and control their victims,” said Avery Friedman, a Cleveland attorney representing the girl and her parents. “What they did not take into account [was that this was] a youngster with the kind of values that I don’t think they want.”
He described the girl’s parents as middle-class, blue-collar workers. The family has been rallying around her. “We’re doing all right,” said the girl’s brother. “We’re going to be OK.”
Police are still trying to sort out all the locations where they think prostitution and sexual assaults took place.
They also are trying to find out more about Davis, who appeared to live a transient life, moving in and out of motels with the girls and his associates in recent years.
In 1999 he received an Illinois state identification card that listed his address in the 6900 block of South Stony Island Avenue. His driver’s license has been revoked since 1994, when his address was listed in the 8000 block of South Escanaba Avenue.
Detroit police said Davis gave them a false address in the 7800 block of South Shore Drive. That building is vacant.
Secretary of state’s office records show Davis was ticketed several times in the mid-1990s for driving while his license was revoked.