Jury weighs case against woman accused of using 13-year-old girl like sex slave
A Columbus jury now must decide whether Kashonda Tekecia Miles aided her now-imprisoned husband in using a 13-year-old girl like a sex slave in the summer of 2012, or whether the victim concocted tales of being confined to the couple’s Monmouth Drive home and compelled to have sex with them and others.
The victim, now 19, gave detailed testimony of sordid sex acts she said the couple forced her into when she stayed with the family friends between June 1 and Aug. 1, 2012, including giving both the husband and wife oral sex, being Tased as she was offered to a female visitor for sex, and participating in a four-man so-called “Mandingo party” on July 4.
She did not report this until a year later, after which authorities raiding the Miles’ home found various sex toys akin to what the victim described seeing there, but much of what she recounted remained uncorroborated, and Miles flatly denied the accusations while testifying Monday
Miles, 40, is charged with two counts each of aggravated child molestation and child molestation, and one count each of attempted child molestation and first-degree cruelty to children.
The conflicting testimony jurors heard included:
▪ The victim said she was forced to give Miles oral sex while Miles was on her menstrual period. “I could smell the blood,” she said. Miles testified she was on a medication that prevented her having a menstrual cycle, but offered no evidence to prove that.
▪ The victim said she was woozy as if drugged before the July 4 “Mandingo Party” at the Miles’ home, and said nothing of leaving the home that day. Miles presented a Facebook video she said she recorded at a July 4 fireworks display in downtown Columbus, but the video did include any image of the victim to prove she was present.
▪ The victim said she eventually was confined to the Miles’ home, after Miles quit taking her daily to the Boys & Girls Club. She was unable to move freely through the house because of a barrier the couple installed. Authorities searching the house found no barrier, and presented no evidence of screw holes in the walls or floor where a barrier had been attached.
▪ The victim said she was no longer allowed to go to the Boys & Girls Club because Miles said the trip was too far out of the way. Miles testified that the girl got kicked out of the club for giving another child oral sex. Prosecutors had a program director testify Tuesday that he never kicked anyone out, and would have known if someone had been ejected. “It was not our practice to put a kid out of the club,” he said.
▪ The victim said she was so confined in the house that she could not attend a backyard birthday party for the Miles’ son when he turned 7. Miles showed a video of the party, claiming one of the guests pictured was the victim. The victim testified that guest was someone else. “My instructions were to stay in my room, so I obeyed my instructions.”
▪ Though unrelated to the charges against Miles, the victim told investigators another girl living with the Miles got pregnant and was forced to have an abortion by drinking whiskey and antifreeze, after which the fetus was buried in the backyard. Authorities searched the yard with cadaver dogs and found nothing.
“They did not find anything visible,” FBI Agent Brian Schlossberg testified Tuesday, but added, “Finding nothing is not usual.” The search occurred a year later, and the size of the fetus was undetermined, he said: “It could have been the size of a quarter. It could have been the size of a fist.”
▪ The victim said Miles used a Taser on her after she refused to comply with a female visitor who told her to lie back on a bed and spread her legs. The victim said Miles got the yellow and black Taser from a bag of sex toys. The Taser investigators found during their search was not yellow and black. Miles said her husband bought her a Taser for self-defense because she worked late.
▪ The victim’s testimony indicated Miles regularly was at the Monmouth Drive home, but Miles said that except for visits to see her son, she had moved out, renting an apartment on Gazebo Way. When Schlossberg questioned Miles in November 2013, she gave her address as Monmouth Drive: “We had an apartment, but we don’t have it anymore,” she told him.
During her testimony Monday, Miles was asked about the sex toys and other risqué items investigators found while searching the Monmouth Drive residence. Miles said the couple bought a whip and masks for a costume party, as he went as Zorro and she as Kitty Cat.
Her husband had bought a collar and leash for another costume party she did not attend, and she had never seen a spiked collar and leash investigators confiscated, she said.
Other masks authorities found were never used, she said. Also she never used a near-empty container of “warming gel,” she said, and when asked what a box of large condoms was for, she said, “For use, I guess — I never used them.”
When asked about strap-on dildos, she said those were her husband’s. “We entertained at parties, but I didn’t use it,” she said.
In closing arguments, defense attorney Stacey Jackson emphasized contradictions in the victims’ testimony and blasted the prosecution for its lack of evidence and the absence of corroboration to back up the victim’s claims.
Prosecutors produced no one else to testify to conditions at the Miles’ home, though the victim said other girls were there, including the one who had a forced abortion. The prosecution identified none of the men from the “Mandingo party,” nor the woman who visited there the day the victim allegedly was Tased, Jackson said.
Displaying the sex toys and other items authorities found had no value other than to prejudice jurors against his client, as that evidence proved nothing related to the charges, Jackson said.
He also slammed prosecutors for blaming his client for her husband’s depravity. Besides keeping her own apartment, Miles worked during the day, and was not at the Monmouth Drive residence much of the time. Jurors cannot convict her simply for being associated with her husband, or just for being at the house on occasion, he said.
The husband, Marcus Anthony Miles, 35, is not on trial because he pleaded guilty to child molestation on Nov. 13, 2017. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with nine to serve.
The year’s delay in reporting the allegations resulted from the victim’s reluctance to tell anyone, she testified: “I was in denial about a lot of what had happened.”
She said she wound up staying with the Miles that summer because her mother was destitute and addicted to drugs, and could not afford to care for her.
When the mother came from Albany, Ga., to get the daughter in August 2012, the girl told her nothing. When the daughter did finally report what happened, the mother “made it sound like a conversation that didn’t really need to be had … like, ‘I get it,’” the victim said.
Their relationship worsened until finally the mother kicked her out with no change of clothes, and the daughter moved back to Columbus to stay with her father. Still she did not report the allegations until she went into diabetic shock and discovered in the hospital that she had contracted a sexually transmitted disease, she said.
Then she told an aunt, her father’s sister, who immediately took her to the FBI office downtown to talk to an agent. That prompted the investigation that led to authorities serving a search warrant at Monmouth Drive and filing charges against Kashonda Miles and her husband.
As prosecutors gave their closings Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Michelle De Los Santos told jurors the victim at age 13 was trapped, unable to count on her parents for help and forced to rely on the Miles for food and shelter: She did not try to report what was happening, because she had no adult she trusted to help her.
Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Schwartz emphasized that the crimes alleged do not involve consenting adults’ private sexual conduct: “The law draws the line at children,” she said.
Schwartz noted evidence that Kashonda Miles pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution in 2007 in Russell County, where she solicited a 16-year-old at the county health department, asking whether the girl wanted to go to Albany, Ga., to make money “stripping” or “whatever.”
The girl told her mother, who reported it to police, who in a followup undercover operation got Kashonda Miles to say the child could make more money if she not only stripped but had sex with party guests.
Schwartz told jurors they may read news reports about sex trafficking, and wonder how children happen to be recruited for that. “This is how it happens,” she said. “It’s time to put an end to Kashonda Miles’ activities.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2018 at 7:04 PM.