An inexcusable screw-up by U.S. marshals in federal court in Fort Worth could have tanked a case against three pimps who — let’s call it what it is — enslaved an underage girl through threats and manipulation.

In a circumstance that seems all but unthinkable, the victim, under arrest for her own alleged crimes, was placed in a holding cell adjacent to the very men she was supposed to take the stand against.

The March case turned out all right in the end, thanks to the young woman’s courage to go forward with her testimony.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor then made all but certain society won’t have to deal with the pimps again. Pierre Lagrone and Demarcus Davis each got life sentences. Herman Sanders got 35 years.

The case, though, deserves reflection because it illuminates so much about the evil of sex trafficking and how poorly law enforcement, and by extension society, sometimes deals with it.

1 / 2Demarcus "Zigg" Davis, 26.(Tarrant County Sheriff's Office) 2 / 2Pierre "Pedro" Lagrone, 34(Tarrant Couy Sheriff's Office)

The idea that a victim would end up in a courtroom holding cell within speaking distance of the people who victimized her is unthinkable. This is a young woman who was set to testify against the men who enslaved her, humiliated her, who sold her over and over.

In case there is still any question about that, note that Lagrone once fired a gun at Davis during a dispute over who “owned” the victim.

Note, as reporter Kevin Krause explains, that “Lagrone kept the girls in hotels, motels and abandoned houses in the Fort Worth area. He decided when they ate and kept all the money they were paid for having sex, court records said.”

Federal prosecutors were clearly angry that the victim was put in a cell where she was threatened, as well as subjected to manipulative claims that one of the pimps forgave her and that another loves her. This is the sort of life trafficking victims are forced to endure — threatened and beaten in one moment, told how much they are loved and cherished in the next. The cycle of psychological and physical trauma enables pimps to keep women under their control.

Law enforcement is beginning to shift its understanding of how terrible the trafficker/trafficked relationship really is. The Dallas vice unit is being reconstituted under a plan that recognizes that victimhood in prostitution and ramps up activity targeting pimps. But the case of this young woman, now 19, demonstrates that much work remains to be done.

Courts and cops can’t do it alone. A network of social support is needed to break the power pimps have over their victims. The life of a trafficked person is hell, breaking body and spirit.

Herman "Pooh" Sanders, 29. (Tarrant County Sheriff's Office.)

The fact that marshals charged with this victim’s custody couldn’t see that is, at this point, astonishing. No excuses about lack of cell accommodations suffice here.

Our takeaway, however, is that even while this case shows how far we have yet to go, it also shows how to succeed in wiping out this scourge. By winning the cooperation of those who have been trafficked, law enforcement agents have a better chance to empower victims and ensure that justice catches up to the purveyors of modern-day slavery.

What's your view?