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Anthony Coleman faces three counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion and one count of transporting a person for purposes of prostitution, the US Attorney for Massachusetts said. He was arrested on Friday, March 29.
Investigators said Coleman used the chaos that followed the Covid-19 lockdowns to coerce three women into prostitution and used violence and intimidation to keep them in line.
According to the indictment, Coleman targeted women who had lost their jobs or homes from March through August 2020. He had the women move into a home in Lawrence and posted advertisements for sex with the women for cash. He would then drive them to these meetings and take the money offered as payment, police said.
He took one of these victims to Florida multiple times for prostitution, police said.
He also forced the women to have sex with him.
Coleman often abused the women in horrific ways, including forcing one to walk naked on broken glass, holding a woman's head underwater and threatening to drown her, and throwing a victim so hard against a wall she got a concussion, prosecutors allege.
Michael J. Krol, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New England, called the level of abuse "staggering."
“Anthony Coleman is accused of staggering violence and cruelty against women he trafficked and forced into commercial sex," he said in a news release. "In a pattern we see over and over with human traffickers, Coleman allegedly targeted women in need and offered them security only to use violence and threats to control their money and their bodies."
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