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U. S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach talks about an indictment of four people charge with human trafficking for holding a woman and her child captive for two years in Ashland, taken at the Stokes Federal Courthouse in Cleveland on June 18, 2013. FBI agent Eric Smith, center, and Ashland Police Lt. Joel Icenhour were also present

(Scott Shaw, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A mentally disabled woman and her child were held captive for two years by three people in the north central Ohio community of Ashland, according to federal labor-trafficking charges announced today.

The woman and her child were forced to live in a basement with pit bulls and pythons, according to the charges released at a news conference by Steven Dettelbach, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.

Dettelbach said the woman was beaten, threatened and forced into slavery. Some of the threats included telling the woman she would be attacked by the animals. She was forced to perform domestic chores including cooking, cleaning and yard work.

At one point, according to court documents, the woman's captors forced her to beat her daughter, who is now 5 or 6, and took cell-phone video of the beating. The documents state that her captors then threatened to turn her in for child abuse if she tried to escape.

"These individuals preyed upon a human being with a disability," Dettelbach said. "They treated her worse than the animals in that house."

Named in the charges are Jordie Callahan, 26, Jessica Hunt, 31, and Daniel J. Brown, 33, all from Ashland. Callahan and Hunt also are charged with trying to intimidate a witness in this case.

The charges against the Ashland trio come six weeks after authorities discovered three women had been held captive for more than a decade in the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro.

Castro

, 52, is accused of two counts of aggravated murder, 139 counts of rape, 177 counts of kidnapping, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, three counts of felonious assault and one count of possessing criminal tools. The murder charges involve the termination of a pregnancy of one of the women.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Lt. Joel Icenhour of the Ashland Police Department said the woman held captive in his city had suffered a brain injury at age 16 that left her with the mental capacity of a girl of 13 or 14.

Officials said the woman managed to free herself last October by stealing a candy bar so she would be arrested. Later, according to authorities, Callahan showed the video of the child abuse to police.

According to Ashland County Court records and the U.S. Attorney’s office, the woman pleaded guilty earlier this year to two felony counts of child endangering and was sentenced to 150 days in jail. She was released last month because she got credit for time served.

One witness told investigators that Callahan's menagerie included a poisonous coral snake, a ball python and 130-pound Burmese python. That witness said he saw Callahan placing snakes on the woman and her daughter, causing the little girl to cry.

Ashland County authorities originally charged Callahan and Hunt with complicity, abduction, two counts of kidnapping and two counts of extortion. Callahan was also charged with three counts of illegally possessing a weapon.

The state charges against them were filed in January and dismissed today because of the pending federal case.

Court records indicate that a fourth person has been charged. Dettelbach's office declined comment on why that person was not named in today's announcement.

Court records say the unnamed fourth defendant admitted to investigators that she smashed the woman's hand with a rock so she would have to go to the emergency room. The plan was to steal the pain medication the woman was to have used. The defendants also stole the woman's monthly government disability benefits.

The Justice Department has declined to prosecute Castro, who is

because local authorities did not seek federal help, said Mike Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office. Local authorities in Ashland County, however, sought federal assistance because the penalties are harsher.

Castro

to the charges.

Court records show that when Callahan was 15, he was found delinquent by reason of rape for sexual conduct with an 11-year-old girl. (Read an appeals-court ruling in that case in the document viewer below)

Callahan's Facebook page included photographs of him playing with what appear to be pythons. Photos there also suggest that he had a scorpion and tarantula. The page also indicates that he and Hunt were engaged.

Ashland, a community of 20,000 in rural Ashland County, is 65 miles southwest of Cleveland.