Child sex for heroin allegation 'sad, but not surprising'

Editor's note: This story originally ran on March 23, 2015.

A Warren County woman allegedly traded an 11-year-old girl to a Cincinnati drug dealer for sex in exchange for heroin.

On numerous occasions, she allegedly went to the 41-year-old man's apartment in Camp Washington, dropped the girl off, left and came back several hours later.

The 41-year-old man then allegedly had sex with the girl, sometimes videotaping it.

On one occasion, the woman allegedly injected the girl with heroin.

Those are the upsetting details of an indictment announced by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters Monday morning.

"Every case of human trafficking is horrible," DeWine said. "But this is just about as bad as anything I've ever seen."

Thirty-year-old April Corcoran of Pleasant Plain has been charged with 27 felony counts, including complicity in rape, complicity in gross sexual imposition, endangering children, human trafficking and corrupting another with drugs.

The man, Shandell Willingham of Cincinnati, has been charged on 26 similar felony counts.

If convicted of all charges, Corcoran could face life in prison, Deters said.

The crimes allegedly occurred between Feb. 15 and June 6 in 2014, DeWine and Deters said.

Corcoran and Willingham

The curtains were drawn on Corcoran's former Pleasant Plain residence Monday afternoon, although three cars were parked in the driveway. Two pieces of paper were taped to the front door of the home. They read: "No comment," and "talk to lawyer."

Corcoran's home is located on a sizable lot in a sparsely populated rural area. The residence looks out onto acres of farmland. To the immediate left and right of the residence sit two empty homes.

Corcoran's nearest neighbors were two houses down in both directions.

James Bogen, Corcoran's court-appointed attorney, said he's been in contact with Corcoran's family.

"They tell me before she became hooked on heroin, she was a very loving and attentive parent," he said. Corcoran had very few interactions with law enforcement and the court system before Monday's indictment.

She has no criminal record in Ohio. In Hamilton County, the only cases against Corcoran include a disagreement with Discover Bank and a traffic ticket. The Warren County Sheriff's Office told The Enquirer that Corcoran had never been in their jail and that they'd had no dealings with her.

Officials says Willingham raped the child at an apartment complex at 3301 Colerain Ave. in Camp Washington.

However, City Center Properties, the company that manages the property, said they had no record that Willingham was a tenant at the complex.

Keith Benson, a resident at the apartment complex, said he was only a little surprised to hear what was allegedly happening in his building.

"I mean, things like this happen a lot down here," he said. "Probably not to this degree, but there's constantly being reports of animal abuse and fights breaking out around. It's a little bit surprising but not entirely unexpected."

And Danielle Terrell, who lives in the neighborhood, said she wasn't surprised. "There's a lot of pedophiles around in this area," she said, pointing to drug use and heroin overdoses at the local BP and Wendy's.

"It's sad, but not surprising at all," she said.

Willingham had several interactions with law enforcement before Monday's indictment, including a drug trafficking charge, drug possession charge and a domestic violence charge that was later dismissed.

Willingham is currently being held by the Dearborn County Sheriff's Office in Indiana. He's been charged in Dearborn County with dealing and possession of cocaine, among other crimes.

Willingham has a child, according to court records.

Every case is different

The case came to the attention of authorities after the girl moved in with her father and stepmother in June. The girl is now living with them.

Deters said he sent an assistant prosecutor to meet with the girl and she's doing as well as can be expected.

"I don't know how you could ever get past this," Deters said.

Shannon Kiniyalocts, the vice president of behavior health and psychiatric services at Lighthouse Youth Services, an organization that provides counseling and therapy services to children, said there are a number of services that could be offered to a child dealing with such trauma.

Kiniyalocts said sometimes it's easier for a child to work through the trauma with sensory tools rather than talking about it.

Every case is different, Kiniyalocts said. And every person and child has a different way to handle trauma. One person may be more resilient than another.

"It just really depends on the person," she said.

Trafficking in Ohio, beyond

Last year, an Ohio Attorney General Office report noted the AG's Central Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force found 84 "potential victims" of human trafficking rescued or referred for assistance to social service agencies.

The task force helped win convictions in seven criminal cases involving human trafficking. Ohio lawmakers also got involved last year, adopting the End Demand Act in June. Seeking to emulate similar federal anti-human trafficking laws, it eliminated the previous requirement that a minor or someone with a developmental disability could be compelled to engage in the sex acts. That means it's a crime even if the minor consents to sell sex.

The new law increases the penalty for trafficking of those under age 16 or if they are developmentally disabled, making it a felony. In an attempt to target "johns" who seek to purchase sex from a minor, the law also makes it a felony to purchase those services from a minor. It makes a crime using images of minors to try to sell sex in publications or online. It also gives authorities the ability to end parental rights to those who traffic their children.

The AG report noted 85 human trafficking cases across Ohio in 2014, resulting in 98 arrests. It also reported 68 suspected sex buyers, or johns, were reported in Ohio last year, along with 113 suspected traffickers, or pimps, and 181 victims.

Because of the nature of commercial sex trafficking, especially involving children, statistics are difficult to verify. But a 2005 UNICEF report noted there were two million children annually exploited in the global sex trade.

Heroin and its costs

Deters and DeWine said the case highlights the growing heroin epidemic. In Hamilton County, 298 people died of heroin overdoses last year, Deters said.

"The reason that we're highlighting this today is because of the scourge that heroin has caused in our communities," Deters said.

Heroin used to be a drug that only affected a select group of people in the cities, but now it's pervasive in the suburbs too, DeWine said.

Now you're just as likely to see heroin use in Batavia as you would in Cincinnati, DeWine said.

Deters said the federal government has cracked down on the over-prescription of opiate-based prescriptions. The unintended result has been that more people are turning to heroin to feed a growing addiction.

Deters said current state law makes it very difficult to prosecute drug dealers for manslaughter, even if a drug dealer sold heroin to a person and that person overdoses. The prosecutor's office has to prove that the drug dealer saw the person's death as foreseeable.

"But think about the reality of it," Deters said, "if you've been selling someone drugs for a year, you're going to go to court and say 'Hey, I didn't know he was going to die.' "

Deters and DeWine encouraged state lawmakers to change the law this legislative session.

"This is unlike any other epidemic we've ever seen," DeWine said. "Heroin destroys families. Heroin causes people to care about nothing but feeding their habit."

To report suspect human trafficking, call the Greater Cincinnati Hotline, 513-800-1863 or the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, 1-888-373-7888.

Reporters Patrick Brennan, Cameron Knight and Rebecca Butts contributed.