Girl testifies again in sex trafficking trial

‘Minor A’ had fled court Monday amid questions on man called her pimp.

WEST PALM BEACH — A 15-yearold girl reluctantly returned to the witness stand Tuesday a day after she fled from a federal courtroom rather than answer questions about a man described as her pimp.

The teen’s about-face lifted a constitutional cloud that threatened to derail the trial of 63-yearold Charles Smith, who faces a possible life sentence if convicted of charges of sex trafficking of a minor.

As the key witness against Smith, the teen’s testimony was important not just to federal prosecutors but for Smith’s defense team. Under friendly questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Lothrop Morris on Monday, she painted Smith as a predator who gave her crack cocaine in exchange for sex and encouraged her to work as a prostitute from a house on Pine Street near Currie Park in West Palm Beach.

However, when defense attorney Caroline McCrae repeatedly asked her if she had the same relationship with 44-year-old Michael Clark, she bolted from the courtroom. McCrae claims Clark and the girl, identified only as Minor A or AA, agreed to incriminate Smith.

“She’s protecting a man she had an intimate relationship with and was her pimp,” McCrae told U.S. District Judge Middlebrooks before the teen left the stand. She claimed the girl’s refusal to answer questions about Clark and her abrupt exit denied Smith’s constitutional right to confront witnesses who testify against him.

The teen’s reappearance before the federal jury on Tuesday was brief.

She offered few more details about her relationship with Clark, whom she simply described as her “best friend.” It is unclear whether she knows that Clark on June 20 pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges in connection with the March police raid at the Pine Street house. Clark faces a maximum life term when he is sentenced on Aug. 27.

More gripping testimony on Tuesday came from 36-year-old Angela Lilly, who said she was among many women who used the Pine Street house for “dates”

and drugs.

“Nothing but drug use and prostituting,” she said when asked what went on at the small blue cottage that is a block from the Intracoastal Waterway. Smith, she said, would accept drugs, sex or money from women who stayed in the house.

While other women dropped in and out, Lilly said none was as young as Minor A. “She was the only underage girl I knew between Punkmeat and Suncoast,” she said, using the street names for Clark and Smith, respectively.

Like Minor A, Lilly denied that Clark was involved in prostitution. She also said she never heard Minor A call Clark her “best friend.” Instead, she said, “We both just purchased drugs from him.”

Wearing a flowered dress and white sweater she said were purchased for her by prosecutors, Lilly testified that she tried to protect Minor A. Lilly said she would use her own lengthy criminal record on drug, prostitution and other charges as a warning.

Still, Lilly testified she didn’t call police or child welfare workers in hopes of getting Minor A out of harm’s way. Further, she said, she didn’t try to come between Minor A and her mother, who also frequented the house that had no water or electricity.

Lilly described a time when Minor A’s mother ordered her young daughter to go on a “date” with a man in a car. Lilly said she warned Minor A to be careful and to use the man’s cellphone to text her if she needed help. Minutes later, she said she got a text from the man’s phone. Minor A’s mom grabbed the phone and sent her daughter an obscenity-laced reply, Lilly said.

During Minor A’s testimony on Monday, she was fiercely protective of her mother. Not only did the unidentified woman lose custody of Minor A, but she was barred from having any contact with her daughter, who became a ward of the state. Under questioning by defense attorney McCrae, Minor A admitted she ran away from group homes to be with her mother.

But she denied her mother was living at the Pine Street house. “It’s none of your guys’ business,” she said.

The trial is expected to wrap up by Friday.