In the chilly first hours of Feb. 4, 2012, a sheriff's deputy patrolling Washington County passed a scantily clad girl on a residential street and circled back to check on her.

The deputy found the girl sitting on a porch. She was 15, from Tacoma, and said she was looking for a party. It was right about then that a man now identified a Hershell Clark pulled up slowly in his own car. The deputy stopped Clark and got permission to search his laptop.

What he found on the computer ended poorly for Clark's friend, 25-year-old Depri M. Spenser, of Tacoma.

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon on Wednesday sentenced Spenser to 10 years in prison, the mandatory minimum for transporting a minor across state lines for prostitution.

Government prosecutors say Spenser brought two 15-year-old girls from Tacoma to Portland and got them to advertise themselves to johns looking for prostitutes on www.backpage.com.

After passing sentence, Simon asked Spenser how he would feel if someone did to any of Spenser's three young children what he had done.

"It would upset me," he said, "and I would deal with it accordingly."

While apologetic for his crime, Spenser pointed out that he didn't know the ages of either of the children he pushed into prostitution.

Federal prosecutor Stacie F. Beckerman told Simon that many of the girls sent to hotel rooms in Oregon are children and that teenage prostitution is so common that many sex traffickers fail to comprehend the seriousness of their crimes.

But word is trickling out that the FBI's Child Exploitation Task Force is cracking down on those who send children into the sex trade, investigators said after Wednesday's sentencing. Jailhouse conversations monitored by law enforcement show that many have come to understand that crimes such as Spenser's are punishable by up to life in prison.

"It does send a deterrent message," said FBI Special Agent Denise Biehn.

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