The eight-person civil jury found that the woman, identified in court only as Jane Doe, was not a victim of trafficking but was instead a willing sex worker. During the two-week trial, the woman said she was lured to the U.
Instead, Doe said she was forced to engage in often degrading sex acts with as many as 17 men a day, and that the leader of the operation, Hazel Sanchez, kept her employed by confiscating her passport and threatening to harm her family if she ran away. But defense lawyers pointed to an email exchange between Doe and Sanchez before she came to the U. They also noted that Doe traveled to Costa Rica often between and β when she alleged that she was trafficked β only to return to Sanchez each time.
The other two former officers, Michael Barbazette and Jason Mardocco, admitted they were clients of Sanchez and resigned from the force after their phone numbers were found on her phone. Doe filed the lawsuit in against unnamed Fairfax county police officers. The lawsuit came after a criminal case against Sanchez in which she was convicted and sentenced to more than 2 years in prison for running a prostitution ring.
Some sex workers told the FBI during its investigation of Sanchez that law enforcement officers were clients of her Virginia-based operation and provided protection to Sanchez by tipping her off when police were conducting sting operations in the area. He also added Roessler and Baumstark as defendants when a former sex-trafficking detective in Fairfax County, William Woolf, reached out to Glasberg and alleged that Roessler and Baumstark had tried to interfere in his work.
The initial allegations against Roessler and Baumstark never suggested that they were clients of the prostitution ring. But last week, as the trial began, Doe and her lawyer alleged publicly for the first time that they were.
