Marlin Williams is off to prison for the next two decades, because he took a 15-year-old girl from Wichita to work the streets of Dallas as a prostitute.
Williams, 38, was sentenced to 246 months in prison last week, and courthouse sources say he continued to blame the teenage girl for his predicament.
Actually, it was state lawmakers, who passed a law against aggravated human trafficking, that gave prosecutors the power to charge adults who recruit or transport girls for illegal sexual activities. Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc Bennett, who directs the sex crimes trial unit, said before the law went into effect in 2007, there wasn’t a charge that would bring substantial prison time.
Williams was the first person in Sedgwick County charged under the 2007 law. A jury convicted him in September.
Judge Clark Owens based Williams’ hefty sentence last week on a criminal history that dated to the 1980s.
The girl testified that she was a runaway who ended up being taken in by a women whose name she didn’t know. There, the girl said she made $6,000 in about two weeks of performing sexual favors for customers along a stretch of Northwest Highway near I-35 in Dallas. She said she gave the money to Williams.
Williams remains in the Sedgwick County Jail, awaiting prison placement by the Kansas Department of Corrections.