Newspaper series explores how prostitution and human trafficking ring took root in rural Iowa

In 2005 and 2006, The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, covered the court cases arising from an Iowa prostitution and human trafficking ring. According to Gazette senior editor Lyle Muller, the cases, which involved a 13-year-old girl from suburban Minneapolis, led the newspaper to ask: "How could such crimes flourish in predominantly rural Eastern Iowa?"

After a year and a half, the paper's investigation into that question is being published in a special report called "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree." The narrative series began yesterday with an article by Jennifer Hemmingsen, right, who spent the past year working on the project after taking it over from former staff writer Zack Kucharski when he became the paper's Information Center manager. In that time, Hemmingsen interviewed 25 people at length, including criminal defendants, escort service clients, law enforcement investigators and attorneys, and the teenage Minneapolis-area girl forced into prostitution as part of ring based in tiny Cosgrove, Iowa (above in a Gazette photo by Brian Ray). Hemmingsen begins the narrative this way:

In the basement of an ordinary-looking Williamsburg home, the 13-year-old girl was given a choice. Either she would have sex with two men nearly twice her age or she would be given back to her kidnapper.

Already in the week since Demont Bowie told the suburban Minneapolis girl she belonged to him, he'd beaten and abused her, starved her and deprived her of sleep. He traded her body to his friends and even a mechanic. When Demont told her to do something to someone, she did. There was no refusing. He'd said he'd kill her, kill her family, if she tried to leave.

She believed him.

Somehow, she'd survived a week of hell at Demont's hands in Wellman, a Washington County town of 1,500 people. Now Demont was gone — had run away after a fight with his father at an Easter 2005 family gathering.

The girl was in the basement with Demont's half brother, Moosey Jones, who had put her in this double bind. She was bawling, begging him. But she was terrified of Demont, so she had sex with Moosey, his friend and another underage boy, not knowing that not going back to Demont would send her on a new, terrible path as a prostitute for a business advertising in Eastern Iowa as an escort service called Naughty-bi-Nature.

It's a harrowing account and an impressive piece of reporting. The series also includes a video report, an explanation of how the report was done, a chance for readers to offer feedback. The report's home page is here.