​The Sunshine State has a new candidate for its most despicable criminal of the year. Police in Jacksonville have arrested a 35-year-old mother named Dalina Nicholas on charges that she repeatedly sold sex with her six-year-old daughter in exchange for cash and drugs. Two men have also been charged with sexual battery in the case after police caught Nicholas on the run in Georgia.

"I can't think of an adjective that's bad enough to describe (the charges)," Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Bruce Thomason tells the Florida Times-Union.



Nicholas' own mother, who is now caring for the six-year-old girl, sticks up for her own daughter, though. She says the drug addict was essentially taken hostage in her own home by drug dealers who took advantage of her and her young daughter.

"These drug dealers kept returning and basically they took over her home," the girl's grandmother tells the Times-Union. "She was as much a victim as her daughter was."

Whoever is to blame, the allegations in the case are stomach-churning. Police were tipped off to the alleged abuse in Nicholas's house by a homeless man in the neighborhood. Detectives say he flagged down police after doing drugs in the house and seeing the girl being sexually abused.

Two men have also been charged with abusing the girl: 56-year-old Quinn Brooks and 47-year-old John Hagans, a homeless man nicknamed "Mute."

The two men have extensive criminal records, the Times-Union reports, while Nicholas' had only one previous drug conviction on her record. Nicholas now faces child neglect charges, while Hagan and Brooks are each charged with capital sexual battery.

Her daughter is now in state therapy and is living with her grandparents, police say.

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