Detroit man convicted of sex trafficking; held women as slaves, drugged and beat them

A parolee with a long criminal record was convicted Thursday of running a sex trafficking operation out of a home in Detroit, where teen girls and women were held against their will behind a gate, drugged, sold into prostitution — and beaten if they didn't perform well.

After two hours of deliberations, a federal jury concluded that 70-year-old Richard Jackson did all this to his victims, including a teenage girl who, court records show, escaped from a bathroom window. Another teen had been beaten in the face, a source told the Free Press.

According to federal prosecutors, police discovered the sex ring in 2016 after receiving a 911 call from a woman pleading for help. When Detroit police arrived, they said, they saw signs of a sex trafficking operation: There were drug needles everywhere, and a security gate installed at the top of the stairs.

"This defendant treated his victims like goods to be bought and sold," U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider said in announcing the guilty jury verdict. "He targeted vulnerable women and exploited them for his own profit."

Schneider said Jackson also "manipulated his victims' drug addictions and provided them with a constant supply of heroin and crack cocaine."

According to court records, Jackson is a habitual offender with 17 aliases who has been in and out of prison for most of his adult life for crimes including armed robbery, drug possession and assault.

His latest crime involved running a prostitution ring out of a house on South Electric in southwest Detroit and forcing women to "walk the track" as prostitutes at Michigan and Livernois, as well as pimping them out on the Internet. To keep them from escaping, he locked them in an upstairs room and kept a steel gate at the top of the stairs, according to court records.

When police discovered the operation, one woman told officers: "My sister’s in the basement. You’ve got to get to her. He’s going to kill her," according to a police report.

The woman also told police that Jackson pumped them with drugs and beat them if they refused to work or didn't perform well as prostitutes, according to court records. One victim told police that Jackson broke her left arm after she told him that she didn't want to go on any more sex dates. She was hospitalized. When she returned, court records show, Jackson broke the same arm again.

According to court records, Jackson kept all of their money. He advertised the girls on Backpage.com and used his phone to set up ads for the victims.

Jackson will be sentenced on April 16. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years, and could get up to life in prison.

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com.