A former prison guard was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years behind bars for forcing two teens into prostitution with the help of her boyfriend, whom she met when he was an inmate.
Poshauntamarin Walker, 35, who last lived in Coatesville, near Philadelphia, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak in Pittsburgh.
She and her boyfriend, Rasul Abernathy, 33, pleaded guilty last fall to federal charges of sex trafficking of children in return for 10-year prison terms. Abernathy was sentenced last month.
"The victims, who are under 18, cannot consent to being trafficked but are forced into that world by poverty and circumstances," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Lieber Smolar told the judge. "They do not have loving and supportive families like the defendant but live on the street and try to survive day to day."
Walker acknowledged forcing a 17-year-old boy the couple met online to sell himself for sex between December 2012 and March 2013 while she and Abernathy lived in North Versailles, a Pittsburgh suburb.
Walker didn't plead guilty to charges involving a 16-year-old girl the couple was also charged with prostituting, but she acknowledged responsibility for that behavior as part of her plea.
Details of the sex trafficking charges emerged when the FBI unsealed a search warrant a few days after the couple was arrested in their home last February.
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Abernathy and Walker placed personal ads for sex services that had phone numbers investigators linked to the couples. They paid cash for hotel rooms or sometimes used Walker's debit card, and she would drive the boy to his "dates" with Abernathy as a passenger in the car, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Lieber Smolar told the court.
Abernathy met Walker when he was incarcerated from February 2007 to September 2008 at the state prison in Greensburg. After his release, the couple lived together when Abernathy met the 16-year-old after she ran away from Allegheny County's Shuman Juvenile Detention Center.
Abernathy told the girl she could live with Walker, but he didn't tell her that he lived there, too, and they'd all have to share one bed, authorities said.
According to an FBI search warrant, Walker showed the girl how to dress and apply makeup provocatively, and Abernathy dictated the price for her sexual services. The couple gave her marijuana and pain pills to relax before she had sex with customers and alcohol afterward. They also physically abused the girl or threatened her with violence if she refused to perform the sexual services or tried to run away, authorities said.
