Fayetteville police make second arrest in sex trafficking case

Henry
Henry

FAYETTEVILLE -- A former Razorback basketball player was arrested Sunday in connection with human trafficking and the rape of a 14-year-old girl.

Jason Henry, 26, of 263 Garrison Ave. in West Memphis was arrested on charges of trafficking a person, second-degree promoting prostitution and first-degree sexual assault. He was being held Monday in the Washington County Detention Center on a $15,000 bond.

The case began March 22 when Fayetteville police received a call from Washington Regional Medical Center's emergency room that a 14-year-old female patient had been raped, according to police call logs and Henry's arrest report.

The victim told police a neighbor named Jessyca "introduced her into prostitution" and began charging men to have sex with her, according to the reports. The girl was raped by at least five men over the weekend and had been plied with alcohol and drugs, she told police.

Jessyca Hoskins, 26, was arrested Friday in connection with recording a video of the victim having sex with a man and sending it to another person, according to her arrest report.

The victim said a man named "Allstar" acted as her pimp and also had sex with her. The man texted the victim about how much to charge for sex acts and that he was in charge of her, according to the report. Police believe "Allstar" is Henry, who played one season with the University of Arkansas before being cut from the team in 2009 for academic problems.

Henry told police he had consensual sex with the victim. He said he didn't want to be her pimp and only offered advice for selling sex, according to his arrest report.

Investigators are looking for other men who assaulted the girl, Sgt. Craig Stout said.

"There's still a couple of other suspects that we're trying to identify," he said. "I believe there will be potentially more arrests forthcoming."

Hoskins and Henry's arrests are among several recent trafficking-related arrests and convictions in the area. Doncouri Wells, 38, of Fayetteville was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison earlier this month for prostituting a 16-year-old girl. Roy Merritt, 23, was arrested in Februrary in Fayetteville for forcing a woman into prostitution in several states. He was being held Monday in the county jail on a $150,000 bond.

The multibillion-dollar industry of labor and sex trafficking claims millions of victims worldwide, including hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, according to The Polaris Project, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

The General Assembly passed several laws in 2013 that enhanced the penalties for traffickers and their customers and aimed to improve services for victims.

"We've been fortunate up to this point that we haven't seen a lot of it here, but we have seen a few cases in recent years," Stout said, adding that the recent arrests weren't the result of a trafficking-focused initiative. "The larger town you get, the more and more you start seeing it."

Dan Holtmeyer can be reached at dholtmeyer@nwadg.com and on Twitter @NWADanH.

NW News on 03/31/2015

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