Dimas Hernandez and Franklin Rivera-Mendieta operated a sex-trafficking ring in East Whiteland Township for months. A Chester County jury is now poised to decide their fate.
A Chester County jury on Friday convicted two alleged members of a Latino street gang of running a widespread sex-trafficking ring in plain sight.
Hernandez and Rivera-Mendieta were found guilty of trafficking in minors, involuntary servitude, kidnapping, rape, and related offenses for operating the ring, which catered to dozens of clients, according to Deputy District Attorney Erin O’Brien. “None of these people were held against their will. They were running a business,” Ryan Hyde, Hernandez’s attorney, said Friday. “When they say these women were innocent dupes, that’s not true.”But the jury of nine men and three women were not swayed, and found Hernandez and Rivera-Mendieta guilty of all counts after deliberating for nearly three hours late Friday.
But Kathleen Boyer, Rivera-Mendieta’s attorney, cautioned jurors about trusting the testimony of those men, whom she said were promised more lenient sentences in their own criminal cases for cooperating with prosecutors. The two were rarely allowed to leave without supervision from their captors, Sibrian-Sanchez said. At one point, he was scolded for leaving his phone out in the open and warned never to allow the younger victim to contact her family.
The girl testified that while at a house party, she was promised a job, money, and safety in Pennsylvania by a woman who was friends with Hernandez. Hernandez made arrangements for the girl to be picked up by Rivera-Mendieta and taken to East Whiteland, where she was repeatedly forced into having sex, under threat that her family would be harmed.