Moments after her daughter stepped down from the witness stand, the mother crossed the bar, raised her right hand and swore to tell the truth about a Gulfton brothel run by a Houston gang.
She had just watched her daughter describe the horrors of being forced into prostitution after being smuggled to Mexico and then extorted back into the sex trade in Houston. Along the way, her daughter was beaten, drugged and had guns pointed at her face.
Still, the young woman got on the stand. Now, it was her mother’s turn to tell her story publicly for the first time.
“I am the only person who knows everything about how everything happened from the beginning,” the mother said. She had a message for anyone who might hear her story.
“They should never trust anyone or put their children in a stranger’s hands,” she said.
MORE ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Houston madam who ran Gulfton brothel sentenced to life in federal prison
Inside a Houston federal courtroom on Tuesday, new details emerged about the 2017 takedown of a sex trafficking ring run by the Southwest Cholos, a gang that once operated in Gulfton and surrounding neighborhoods in southwest Houston.
More than eight years after the initial indictment was handed up, some of the 23 people charged and convicted are being sentenced for their crimes. One case has been dismissed and four people named in the indictment were never arrested and have active warrants out for their capture.
Members of the Southwest Cholos gang walk into federal court Friday, Nov. 17, 2017, in Houston. Twenty-four people associated with the gang were indicted on sex trafficking charges related to a brothel in Gulfton section of Houston between 2009 and 2017. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/Houston Chronicle)
The women spoke at the sentencing hearing for William Alberto Lopez, a pimp and enforcer for the Cholos, who went by the nickname “Principal.”
Lopez in January pleaded guilty to two of the 27 charges against him and was in court Tuesday for a hearing to decide how long he would be sentenced to federal prison.
Lopez was accused of recruiting women to work at the brothels, which for many became a time of indentured servitude, according to prosecutors.
The gang would track down women who tried to leave the brothel and tattoo them to signal that they belonged to their pimps. They smuggled women across borders and threatened to hurt their family members if they tried to escape.
Lopez is one of five sons of Maria “Patty” Moreno-Reyna, the madam who earlier this month was sentenced to life in prison.
Maria Angelica “Patty” Moreno-Reyna walks into federal court Friday, Nov. 17, 2017, in Houston. Moreno-Reyna is one of 22 defendants facing federal charges in the sex trafficking operation ran by the Southwest Cholos in the Gulfton section of Houston between 2009 and 2017. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/Houston Chronicle)
From Nicaragua to Mexico to the Gulfton brothel
One of Lopez and Moreno-Reyna’s victims was A.B.P., who in 2016 was transported from her home in Nicaragua to Cancún. She was just 19 years old.
A.B.P., whose full name wasn’t given in court documents and who continued to use only her initials during Tuesday’s hearing, told Judge Charles Eskridge that she was fleeing an abusive relationship and was trying to join her mother, who was already in Houston and working as a housekeeper at the Westin Galleria.
The woman paid $9,000 to get A.B.P. from Nicaragua to Mexico.
When she reached Mexico, A.B.P. wasn’t immediately brought to the U.S. She was made to work as a prostitute in a brothel there, forced to wear “babydoll” clothes and given morphine to placate her. At times, Lopez tried to suffocate her with a pillow.
“He destroyed me, physically and emotionally,” she said.
After three or four months of abuse, A.B.P. escaped the brothel and managed to get to Houston after being apprehended by immigration authorities and released to her mother.
A.B.P.’s mother joins brothel – ‘I had to do it.’
“I wanted my daughter to cross and have it over with once and for all,” the mother testified Tuesday. But when A.B.P. did finally reach the United States, Lopez’s brothers – also members of the Cholos – showed up at her door and demanded payment, an extortion for the cost of getting her to Mexico.
A.B.P. was forced to work as a prostitute, the mother said. She was beaten and forced to send money back to Lopez on Mondays, she said.
The mother, faltering, told Eskridge she wanted to say something else.
“I never wanted to mention it to anyone, because sometimes you get a lot of embarrassment,” she said. “You know that the word ‘prostitute’ is very charged and, as a woman, you feel discriminated against.”
“There are prostitutes who are prostitutes because they want to be,” she said. “And others, they don’t want to.”
The mother then said she also became a prostitute at the brothel in an attempt to pay back Lopez. The women were kept locked up and forced to work 16-hour days starting at 10 a.m., they said.
“I had to do it,” the mother said. “And I would do it 1,000 times over to help my daughter. It was both of us. It was the only way we could survive.”
The phone call that cracked the case
One day, after the brothel’s pimps beat them and pointed guns at them, one of the men challenged her to call the police, she said.
That’s what she did.
“I called the police,” she said. “I made the decision to call the police to not be afraid anymore. I offered my help.”
After she spoke, prosecutors acknowledged that her participation in the investigation was critical to the gang’s prosecution.
“That’s what really cracked this case,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Goldman said. The mother’s information was passed to the FBI and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which together worked to take down the gang, Goldman said.
Eskridge, who previously handed down Moreno-Reyna’s life sentence, said Tuesday it was the first time he’d heard testimony from victims in the case.
“It just really, really brings it home how truly awful the conduct is that’s occurred here,” Eskridge said. “There’s just a very large record of force and violence and coercion against these women – many of whom were very, very young – that overrode their will and took away their liberty and compelled them to undertake acts that no one would willingly and voluntarily do.”
Lopez was sentenced to 45 years in prison. His hope was that he would get out in time to help arrange his mother’s burial.
This article originally published at A Houston mom joined a Gulfton brothel to save her daughter. She helped take down a sex trafficking ring..