Woman charged with sex trafficking of 16-year-old girl
A little over two months after her boyfriend was indicted on federal charges of sex trafficking a minor, an Albuquerque woman was also arrested and charged with human trafficking.
Camara Cherry-Amos, 23, was booked into the county jail Monday. She also faces charges of distribution of child pornography and child abuse.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, Cherry-Amos had posted ads selling sex with a 16-year-old girl multiple times in New Mexico and Arizona from mid-December 2017 to mid-January 2018.
The case first came to detectives with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office when a social worker with the state Children, Youth and Families Department said a mother reported her 16-year-old daughter had run away from home and family members later found there were sexually suggestive ads posted of her in Phoenix.
It’s unclear from the complaint exactly how the girl then ended up in the custody of the Glendale Police Department, but after she talked to detectives there, she was sent back to Albuquerque.
When she was interviewed, the girl told BCSO detectives she had met Cherry-Amos about a year earlier and she had “shown her how to be a sex worker.” She said in early December, CherryAmos brought her to Santa Fe and posted ads for her online on backpage.com.
The pair went to Albuquerque, and then to Flagstaff and Phoenix, where Cherry-Amos continued to post ads online selling sex, according to the complaint.
When detectives interviewed Cherry-Amos, she said she was creating and posting ads for herself and for the girl, but she was just doing it to help the girl out, according to the complaint. She did say she suspected the girl was underage, especially when she realized she knew the juvenile victim her boyfriend is accused of trafficking.
Cherry-Amos’s boyfriend, Jason Jackson, 23, was arrested and federally charged with sex trafficking a minor in November. The case against him is ongoing.