PITTSBURGH (AP) - A former inmate and the state prison guard who became his girlfriend that were charged earlier this year with forcing a 16-year-old runaway girl into prostitution were charged Wednesday with doing the same to a 17-year-old boy.
The sordid details of the charges faced by the former inmate, Rasul Abernathy, 32, and the guard, Poshauntaramin Walker, 34, were revealed in a federal search warrant unsealed in February, a few days after the couple was arrested in Philadelphia.
The charges involving the underage boy were added in a superseding indictment announced Wednesday by federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh. The indictment doesn’t detail how the boy was coerced into sex trafficking and he isn’t mentioned in the search warrant.
Walker’s public defender, Marketa Sims, and Abernathy’s attorney, Douglas Sughrue, both declined to comment.
Abernathy met Walker when he was serving time for a drug offense from February 2007 to September 2008 at the state prison in Greensburg, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, according to the warrant.
Abernathy met the girl after she ran away from a court-ordered juvenile placement. He told the girl she could live with Walker, but he didn’t tell her that he lived there too and they’d have to share a bed, FBI Special Agent Michael Goodhue wrote in the search warrant affidavit.
The couple began prostituting the girl about a month later, posting online ads with the girl’s picture, the FBI affidavit said.
That happened from July of 2012 until March of 2013 when the couple lived near Pittsburgh, according to the new indictment, and the alleged male victim was trafficked sexually from December 2012 until March 2013.
According to the search warrant, Walker showed the female teen how to dress and apply makeup, and Abernathy told her what to charge for sexual services, authorities said. The couple gave her marijuana and pain pills to relax her before trysts, and alcohol after.
Abernathy allegedly punched the girl in the ribs, choked her and pulled her hair if she refused to provide the sexual services. Walker also hit the girl and Abernathy threatened the girl in an attempt to keep her from leaving, according to the search warrant.
The girl eventually contacted a counselor she trusted and was picked up by police in October 2012, authorities said. But she escaped from another juvenile facility by calling Walker to pick her up and the three moved to the Philadelphia suburbs, where Walker had been transferred to another prison.
Walker lost her corrections job when she failed to report for work, and the girl ran away from the couple’s Coatesville home after another former inmate raped her, investigators said. Abernathy told the girl the rape was a “learning experience,” investigators said.
The girl eventually told authorities what had been done to her after winding up in a juvenile detention center last year in Pittsburgh.
Abernathy and Walker remained in custody and face arraignment before a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
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