‘You lied on me!’: Convicted child molester yells at victim after verdict

Kashonda Miles’ formerly placid demeanor dissipated Thursday morning as a Columbus jury found her guilty on all counts in a shocking case alleging she and her husband used a 13-year-old girl like a sex slave in the summer of 2012.

Throughout her trial she had sat calmly as defense attorney Stacey Jackson cited holes in the prosecution’s case, but she gasped and cried at his side as Judge Maureen Gottfried read the verdict: Guilty on two counts each of aggravated child molestation and child molestation, and one count each of first-degree cruelty to children and attempted child molestation

Miles, 40, had been out on bond. As the deputies escorted her from the courtroom to take her back to jail, she turned to her accuser and yelled:

“You lied on me! They didn’t have any evidence! I didn’t do anything!”

The jury deliberated about six hours Wednesday and Thursday before rendering the verdict. Gottfried scheduled Miles’ sentencing for 2 p.m. Sept. 6.

The penalty range for aggravated child molestation is 25 years to life. For child molestation and first-degree child cruelty, the range is five to 20 years. Attempted child molestation has a range of one to 10 years.

Miles faces a maximum of two life sentences plus 50 years, prosecutors said.

The victim on the witness stand told of being drugged and gang-raped, of being forced to give both Miles and her husband oral sex, and of being presented to a female guest for sex and being Tased for resisting.

Assistant District Attorney Michelle De Los Santos said she hopes the verdict sends a message: “This community isn’t going to stand for that type of behavior.”

She said one aspect of the case that set it apart was that Miles and her husband operated in concert — “that this was a husband and wife team, and not only were they abusing the victim, but also pimping her out.”

Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Schwartz said the case illustrates how children get drawn into sex trafficking.

“You know, we in the abstract hear about kids that end up in prostitution, and kids in trafficking, on the streets, who end up ‘in the life,’ and you never really think, how do they get there? How does this happen? And this is it: This is exactly how it happens. You’ve just got children who are unwanted, unloved, and they end up with people like this.”

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 her being drugged before a four-man so-called “Mandingo party” on July 4, after which she woke up in a kiddie pool filled with fluid akin to baby oil.

She also recounted Miles’ helping her dress up as if they were going out, before she was presented to a well-dressed woman who came into the bedroom and told her to lie back on the bed and spread her legs. When she refused, Miles used a Taser to knock her out, burning her leg.

She said the couple held her like a prisoner, installing a locked barrier in the home to confine her there. Because her destitute, drug-addicted mother could not afford to pay the couple to keep her, they told her she should feel obligated to give them oral sex and to have intercourse with Miles’ husband.

In August 2012, her mother came from Albany, Ga., to get her, but showed no interest in hearing what had happened, the victim said. Their relationship deteriorated until the mother kicked her out, and an aunt brought her home to Columbus, to live with her father.

Neither parent had shown much interest in the child, the aunt testified.

In 2013, the victim went into diabetic shock, and woke up in the hospital disoriented and fearing she was back at Miles’ home. While hospitalized, she learned she had a sexually transmitted disease.

That’s when she told her aunt about the sexual abuse, and the aunt took her to the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in downtown Columbus, where agents sent her for a forensic interview with a counselor at Children’s Treehouse.

In November 2013, authorities raiding the Miles’ Monmouth Drive home found various sex toys akin to what the victim had described seeing there, but much of what she recounted remained uncorroborated, and Miles flatly denied the accusations on the witness stand.

Jackson in his closing argument emphasized that prosecutors produced no one else to confirm the victim’s account of her confinement in Miles’ home, and they identified none of the men from the “Mandingo party,” nor the woman who visited Miles the day the victim was Tased.

He said the prosecution was blaming Miles for her husband’s depravity, though Miles at the time had her own apartment on Gazebo Way, and only visited Monmouth Drive to see a son the couple shared.

Miles’ husband, Marcus Anthony Miles, 35, pleaded guilty to child molestation on Nov. 13, 2017. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with nine to serve, and is currently in the Coffee Correctional Facility in Nicholls. He did not testify in his wife’s trial.

In her closing argument, Schwartz reminded jurors of evidence Kashonda Miles previously has recruited girls for sex.

She 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.”

In a followup undercover operation, investigators recorded Kashonda Miles saying a teen girl could make more money if she not only stripped but had sex with party guests.

“It’s time to put an end to Kashonda Miles’ activities,” Schwartz said.

This story was originally published August 23, 2018 at 5:05 PM.